The Conduit of Yokai Academy
by TwoChimpsWithoutOne
Summary: John VaSilas, Leech Conduit, wielder of three powers, each more deadly than the last, and Bio-Terrorist on the run from everything he ever knew. When a chance encounter during a desperate run for freedom sends him into a world he had always thought fictional, can the Conduit of Yokai Academy retain his Humanity, or will he give in to the power he possesses?
1. Chapter 1

Prologue

* * *

_"Well there's always been groups of people who could never see eye to eye, but I always thought if they ever had a chance to talk face to face, they may realize they had a lot in common." ~ Chris LeDouz 'This Cowboy's Hat'._

_..._

_"Like fucking **what**? Killing Humans?" ~ John VaSilas, in response to hearing the above for the first time._

* * *

He was running, as far and as fast as his super-Human body could carry him. John VaSilas had, indeed, ran farther and faster before, but the reason for his last flee led into the reason for this one.

John - or, 'Silas', as he preferred to be called - was a Conduit, and in this world, that was far worse than being black in nineteenth century America, or being of Jewish faith in Nazi Germany. The difference between Silas and the aforementioned minorities, however, was that Silas wasn't entirely Human. Conduits were essentially the next step in Human evolution, with each awakened Conduit having super-Human abilities that ranged from the comic-book common, to the weirdest of the weird. Silas had come across 'normal' conduits who could fly, or had telekinesis, and he had come across 'odd' conduits, who could control - of all things - odors, or neon energy, whatever _that_ was. Silas, however, was a unique Conduit - in far more than just one way - he was what he knew as a 'Leech' conduit, or a Conduit that could absorb the abilities off of other conduits, like how a leech could steal the blood of a living being. Silas had exercised these powers three times, before, each time in the very city that introduced Conduits to the greater world.

Empire City, the city of commerce, it had been the teenager's home for as long as he could remember. But on that fateful day, not one year ago on his fifteenth birthday, no less, The Blast changed everything. His mother, a firefighter, had been vaporized in the initial blinding blast, and his father, a former Ranger turned SWAT Technician, had soon been killed by the gangs and chaos that followed. Silas had been alone for weeks, until he had - by pure happenstance - bumped into a Conduit, who could manipulate _smoke,_ another odd power that Silas had only encountered a few times post-Empire. It had tth aken Silas weeks to master Smoke, and to evade the Conduit who had given him the power, but the mastery came with a sense of freedom he had never experienced before. While Smoke was certainly less lethal than his other two powers, it was certainly good for travel.

Silas' newfound Conduit powers had let the then-fifteen year old teenager survive more or less unchallenged in the fading city, because the focus of the Gangs was more on the more recognized of Empire's conduits: Cole MacGrath, the Electric man, and the source of his second set of powers. MacGrath had just crossed over into the Warren, but had been shot to hell and back and was in desperate need of medical attention. Silas knew of MacGrath's exploits because of his friends over in the Neon district, and thus, knew of how good and benevolent a man he was. Silas had assisted MacGrath and given him shelter for a night, before finding him a source of electricity which healed the conduit. The two had shaken hands as a result, which had given Silas his powers. A shocked - no pun intended - electrokinetic Conduit had given the Leech a quick run through on how to control his electric powers, before he had to go off and continue his work, cleaning up the city and hunting for something known as the 'Ray Sphere'.

Months would pass, and though Silas would meet up with MacGrath twice more, he would more or less refuse to become the Hero Cole was turning out to be, instead choosing to use his powers not selfishly, but more simply to keep himself alive. Then, of course, Fate had to be a cruel bitch, and it sent him the mother of all curve balls when a Beast of a conduit gave him his third set of powers. Perhaps, however, the proper term was _The_ Beast.

After MacGrath's highly televised but extremely classified duel against the Beast, it had caused an explosion that glassed the entire city, but Silas - utilizing his smoke abilities - had managed to survive it, though not without incurring many injuries. The massive Titan had noticed him, before it had continued down its path of destruction to the Southern United States, and Silas could only guess as to why what happened next, happened next. Silas assumed the massive conduit had deigned him a threat and wanted to kill him, because it had picked up the small Human like it was nothing, like a person would pick up a stick, or a pencil, and the Beast had tried to break him just as easily as one would break said objects. However, Silas had abilities the Beast hadn't seen coming, most likely hadn't even known existed, and by sheer luck, when Silas' hand clenched the hand that held him in a vice grip, he had absorbed the very powers that fueled the Titan conduit. The resultant explosion had stunned the Beast and had knocked Silas unconscious, somehow sending him halfway across the continental US.

Months had passed, and Silas had spent each waking moment of them trying to learn to control the awesome, deadly beyond belief powers that the Titanic Conduit had given him. In the end, however, it was like controlling a Demon: He could do it, but not for long. Thus, he had resorted to forcing himself to learn how to keep the Beast within him locked up, and thankfully he had done so. But then, of course, the Department for Unified Protection came into existence, and Conduits all over the world were suddenly free game for their concentration camps. Silas had been able to avoid the DUP for a period of several months, but now, they had found him. They knew of his powers, not just of his Smoke and Electrokinetic Powers, but of his powers over the Beast within him. From what he had gathered, the _original_ Beastial Conduit had been a direct result of a fusion between him and his powers, and the device that birthed all Conduits: The Ray Sphere; in essence meaning that the long-since dead Beast, and still living Silas, had control over an organic version of the device that could create, or - god fearing - _enhance_ any Conduit in existence.

Thus, had begun Silas's flee from modern society, but the DUP wouldn't let him have it so easy. They _wanted_ his powers, and they were ready, willing, and able to bomb entire towns to do so. He found himself stopping for just a moment in the woods outside a nearby city, he didn't know which one it was and he didn't care, to be honest. He gave himself a once over, as was his custom all he was wearing was his running shoes, a non-descript black T-Shirt, a white, unzipped hoody, and his weathered but reliable jeans. In his pockets he felt his MP3 player Zippo lighter he'd stolen out of some store in Iowa. On his back, Silas had a simple sling-bag, packed with a change of clothes, batteries, a lighter and several sheets of thick paper. He wished he had a better weapon, but the only one he had he'd had to leave during his escape.

A rasping Silas swiped his hand through his short, jet black hair and took a deep breath, before he let it loose, and continued running, he heard dogs barking behind him, and the cracking sound of concrete breaking ground as well, meaning that the DUP had sent their forced-Conduits after him. Silas sprinted faster, the feeling of his feet silently slamming into the ground beneath him was all but unfamiliar to the Conduit, Empire City had taught him to be as mobile as possible, and while he was no professional, Parkour and Free-running had been skills that had been bred out of necessity.

Silas broke through the treeline and saw the city off in the distance, however, in his immediate area, he saw what could be his salvation. A bus, sitting nonchalantly right next to a tunnel leading into a small mountain, was waiting for its passengers, which looked nonexistent. Silas knew many things about the DUP, but chief among them: Only a select few of them were smart, and almost all of the rest of them were about as stupid as people who worked in fast-food joints. Silas knew they would expect him to keep running, to ignore the bus, because it was such an obvious ploy.

So Silas, against his own instincts, ran straight for the bus.

_If he asks why I'm running..._ Thought the wheezing Conduit, _I'll tell him I thought I was late._ He reasoned with himself, before he sprinted across the street.

Silas rounded a corner and saw the bus was still there, but the Driver was beginning to move. Desperately, Silas waved his hands, trying to get the bus driver's attention. Miraculously, it worked, and the Driver stopped the enormous, yellow vehicle so Silas could board it. Huffing and puffing, Silas got into the vehicle.

"You the guy I was supposed to be picking up?" The Driver asked, giving Silas a once over.

Silas, in turn, gave the Driver a once-over. He looked _odd,_ his eyes seemed to have a sort of glowing look to them, and he was chewing - literally _chewing - _on the lit cigar in his mouth. Silas ignored both of these, he could see the flashlights of the DUP Runners just beginning to reach the forest's edge.

"Yup!" Said Silas, his normally deep voice light with forced friendliness, "how much do I owe you, again?" He asked.

The Driver looked at Silas a moment, but said, "this is a school bus, kid, you don't owe me squat."

_Oh... Damn it._ Silas only briefly thought bout taking his chances with the outside world, but decided that, in the end, school couldn't have been worse than running from the DUP, so he took his seat and drew his hood, casting his entire face in shadow. The bus started up again and put-putt-putted along the road, towards the tunnel.

"So... Were you running from something, or _for_ something?" The Driver asked, Silas only now realized how slithery and snake-like his voice sounded.

Silas cleared his throat and leaned down in the chair, beneath the window. "For something." He said, confidently, "I didn't want to be late." Though, late for what, he had no idea.

"I figured." The Bus Driver shifted his blue hat, and gave Silas a quick look over his shoulder. "Why'd you enroll at Yokai Academy?" He asked, innocently enough.

_The hell is Yokai Academy?_ Silas thought, before he shrugged. "Didn't have much choice, given the world I live in." He said, not exactly lying, but not really telling the truth, either.

The Driver laughed, "ain't that the truth." He said, as the bus entered the tunnel and was sheathed in darkness. "In any case, you'd best prepare yourself." The Driver started twitching, as if he were chuckling silently.

Silas gave the Driver a look, "why's that?"

The Driver looked at Silas over his shoulder, as a light could be seen at the end of the tunnel. "Because, kid. I don't know what you've seen out there, but in here? Yokai Academy... It's a school for _monsters."_ He laughed maniacally.

Silas stared at the crazy man, blankly. _Is 'monster' another word for 'conduit', or am I going to a cripple school? _A cold feeling went down Silas' spine, he couldn't help but wonder if he'd fallen into a DUP Trap.

"Right." Said Silas, "you on anything, old man?"

The Driver laughed, as he came to a halt on the other end of the tunnel. "All off." He said, in an ominous tone.

Silas shrugged and got off the bus. He found himself on a cliff overlooking a blood red lake, with a crucified scarecrow, with a pumpkin head, standing right next to him. The bus drove off a few second later, and after Silas flipped it off, he looked out over the lake. It was early in the morning, far earlier than any sane school would be open, but with the sky above him being almost as red as the lake below him, Silas couldn't help the sneaking suspicion that this was a school that was far from sane. Silas sighed and looked at the scarecrow next to him, which was looking right at him, its rotten pumpkin face holding the stereotypical jack-o-lantern pose.

"I'm glad I'm not the only one creeped out." Silas said to the pumpkin, "what do you say, stay here a few weeks, head back out when everything with the DUP has calmed down?" He asked it.

Silence.

"Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing... Any idea where the school is, from here?" He asked.

Silence.

"I'll just..." Silas looked at its chest, which had only an arrow pointing to the north. Looking past the arrow, he saw what he could only describe as a series of gothic castles, all joined together to make one small community. "Go that way." Silas started walking, entering the forest next to him just a few minutes later.

The environment around him was, in a word, _dead._ The trees were blackened, as if they'd been set on fire, the ground beneath him had a fine layer of dust and sand, underneath which was dead, thick rock. And the air smelled like something was burning, it smelled like charcoal, and smoke, and there was a hint of dead body hidden underneath it all.

_Creepy place..._ Thought Silas, as he walked down the path. _It's nothing like where we just were... The hell am -_

_"Out of the waaaaaaaaay!"_ He heard an ungodly girlish voice screech.

Silas whipped around to see what he could only describe as a pink cannonball speeding straight for him. That was all his instincts needed to kick in, and in an instant he was no longer Human, but rather a collection of smoke. He smoke-dashed straight through the cannonball, who he saw was not a cannonball, but rather a girl, and once he was past her he reformed into a Human, staring blankly at the rapidly descending bike-riding girl.

"The fuck was that?" Silas asked himself, before he blinked, shook his head, and followed the path the girl had taken.

* * *

Silas found himself sitting in the Academy's gymnasium, it was a large thing, but instead of being the enormous room dedicated solely to the overfunded basketball program, as he was used to, he was in an actual gymnasium, a room dedicated primarily to physical _education. _After a few minutes of searching, he'd found himself a small section in the bleachers that was empty enough for him to be alone, with his thoughts.

Chief among his thoughts were his glee at escaping the DUP, his preconception that this had been a trap had been wiped away when he'd seen actual students wandering the halls and roads around the school, and a few of the friendlier looking teachers had even waved at him. Second among his thoughts was the bitter sweet realization that, if he stayed here, he would be going to _school._ He didn't really mind that part, school had never been something that was tough for him, he was an A and B student, but the lack of difficulty in any school he went to always led him to one conclusion: School _sucked._ As much as it would help him and benefit his future, it was beyond boring to have your work finished with still a half hour of the class left. Silas had always liked learning new things, Physics had been an avenue he'd considered, but then Empire had happened, and education was very far from his list of priorities.

"Excuse me."

Of course, he had thought about enrolling in a high school once he'd escaped Empire and that colossal Conduit, but those thoughts had been dashed by the Military's capture of any and all Conduits, and his resultant Beastial powers. Both of those together had told Silas he would have to subsist on his half-high school education for however longer he lived.

"Excuse me?"

It had slightly disappointed the Conduit, after he'd gained a slight control over the Beast, and had learned how to squash it down within him, that he wouldn't be able to learn anything new. He loved learning things, and now, thanks to the DUP and the Modern Segregation, education and learning -

"Excuse me?" Silas felt a hand press against his shoulder, shaking him from his thoughts.

Silas looked at the person who was speaking to him, he was able to see her past his hood, but he knew the woman in question couldn't see his face. The girl standing in front of him was probably a half foot shorter than him, she wore a simply skirt and shirt, underneath a sweatshirt. On her legs were no jeans, unlike Silas', she wore stockings that had stripes of varying shades of purple running up them. Her hair, an odd shade of purple, reached down to her shoulders, not at all unlike Silas's, but hers was a neatly styled do, while his was unkempt, only kept in its blast-back style by frequent passes with his hand.

"Yeah?" Silas asked, unable to ignore the chill in the wind that followed the girl.

"Is this seat taken?" She pointed to the empty spot next to Silas.

"Nope." Silas scooted over, and the girl sat down. Several minutes passed by in silence, the orientation went by about as mundanely as Silas had expected it to go: A whole lot of absolutely nothing had gotten done. He had considered breaking the silence with the girl next to him a few times, but in the end he'd decided there wasn't any reason out there dictating he break the silence, the only thing she'd said to him was whether or not a seat next to him was taken, if one continued a conversation from that, then Movie Theaters may have well been places to make new friends.

But, that didn't mean she _hadn't_ spoken to him, so Silas felt he had to get in at least one snarky comment; if anything, it would help make him feel normal, which, hopefully, this school would help restore a sense of: Normality.

"Well... That was fun." He said, looking to his right and seeing the girl blankly staring at him. He blinked, "is there something stuck on my face?" He asked, itching at his poorly shaven chin.

"You smell funny." The girl said, bluntly.

_I have been playing Rambo for about a year and a half._ Silas thought, "doesn't everyone on the first day of school?"

The girl looked at him for a moment, "that is true." She paused, then extended her hand, almost timidly. "Mizore Shirayuki."

Silas accepted the hand, "John VaSilas... My friends call me Silas."

Mizore nodded, and after shaking Silas' hand, left without a word. Silas blinked, he hadn't expected such an anticlimactic exit.

"Okay." He said, before he began walking, the principle wearing the odd clothes - which had reminded him of the higher ranking Reapers, back in Empire - had said class was starting soon, so Silas decided it best to make his way there.

* * *

After a quarter of an hour searching for a classroom, Silas picked the first one he found after the bell rang. Class 3-2 was what was written on the post-it above the door, Silas found himself a seat in the rear corner of the class, and sat down. Two more minutes passed before the teacher, a pale skinned woman wearing glasses, entered the room. She sat at her desk with a slight smile, eyes closed as she reached for her rollbook, as if memory alone was enough to look for it. She opened it up and, with eyes open, she read through the names on the list. Several people called that they were present, one or two were missing, and when she was nearly finished, Silas was surprised at what he heard next.

"VaSilas?" The teacher called out, her voice light in tone but still womanly.

Silas stared at her for a moment, waiting to see if there was another VaSilas in the room.

No one answered.

"John VaSilas?" The teacher looked up.

"Err... Here." Silas raised his hand, silently trying to figure out how his name had been on the roster for a class he had no business being a part of, and had literally chosen at random.

"Oh, good!" Silas heard her say, he thought he heard her muttering something else, but he was too far away to hear her.

Several more minutes passed as the teacher - Nekonome, was apparently her name - called out names. Finally when she was finished, she stood up and grabbed her chalkboard pointer. "Alright, now, welcome!" She said, cheerfully, "my name is Shizuka Nekonome, I'll be your homeroom teacher, this year." She greeted, a smile on her face before she gave the class a quick bow. "Now, I'm sure all of you are aware of this, but for those of you who aren't... Yokai Academy is a school by monsters, and for monsters."

Silas blinked, a smile very quickly stretching across his face. Something inside him told him it was time to start laughing, that this was just a joke they pulled every year on the transfer students, but the same voice that told him which plain-clothed person was a DUP in disguise, also told him to shut the hell up and listen.

_I thought the new name for Conduits was 'Bio-Terrorist'...?_ Silas thought, as the teacher continued.

"As you know!" The teacher continued, after she finished making some crude sketches on the chalk board, of the Earth and a stick-figure on top if it. "Planet Earth has come under the control of the Humans, their population of seven billion far exceeds our own, thus: They have the power!" She said, drawing out the last four words. "In order for us Monsters -" Silas noted that she continued to use the blunt word 'Monster', most Conduits referred to themselves as 'Conduits', there were only a few religious nut jobs that called Conduits 'Monsters', and this lady - with her slightly revealing clothing - was certainly no Nun. - " to continue to survive, we must learn to coexist with the Humans!" Silas knew, very soon, he would have to decide whether or not Human and Conduit were the same thing. "That, is why this school was created! The headmaster, whom you all met earlier this morning, created this school so Monsters could learn to coexist with Humans! So... It is for that reason, that during your stay at this academy, you will always be assuming your _Human Form!"_ She asserted, despite the fact that Silas could easily recognize _ears_ in the mess she called hair. "You see, this is a _school rule_ because it is a matter of being able to disguise yourself _well_ as a human! This is the foundation of coexistence." She explained, drawing out her words on the chalkboard.

_Disguises are also the foundation of warfare, lady._ Silas couldn't help but think. He still doubted the woman's sanity, but the absolute lack of bemused expressions around him told him to take everything this woman was saying as the truth, and it also told him to keep up his streak of keeping his hood drawn.

"Therefor, you are never to allow any of your fellow students to know your 'true form', understood?" She asked, cheerfully.

The class ushered forth a drone-like 'yes ma'am', save for Silas and one other kid, a burly looking teenager who probably could have taken some MMA Fighters on size alone.

"Hey, teach!" Speaking of the devil, the student raised his hand and spoke, not waiting for permission. "Wouldn't it be better if we just _ate_ the Humans?" He paused, "well, the guys, at least... Use the women for... Heh, other things." He grinned devilishly.

Ever the snarky bastard, Silas was the one to respond to the guy. "Isn't that the same logic they used?" He asked the guy, causing all eyes to turn to him. "Kill the men, rape the women, salt the lands? If not for that mentality, why else do the Humans outnumber the Monsters?" He wondered.

The student growled - _actually, **growled**_** -** at Silas, but the Teacher interrupted his retort. _"Incidentaaaallyyyy,_ Here at yokai academy, the teachers and students are aaaalllll monsters, so there are no Humans of any kind, here!" She explained, not knowing that the one paying most attention to her lecture was the one exception to her rule. "This is because the academy is hidden within a secret dimension. Any Humans who know of our existence will... Well be killed!... I think." Silas felt the blood slowly drain out of his face: Conduits had always been bitches to take down, but he always won out in the end, though he knew that wouldn't ring true in a school full of xenophobic werewolves, vampires, bigfoots and who knows what else. "And -" Nekonome was interrupted by the door suddenly crashing open.

"Oh, I'm so sorry I'm late!" Said an extremely effeminate voice, as a girl wearing the school uniform walked inside timidly, head bowed out of shame. "I got lost after the entrance ceremony." Silas thought he recognized the girl, but in the end decided he didn't.

The teacher looked at the newcomer with slight surprise, but let her off the hook. The newcomer - whose name, Silas found out, was 'Moka', like coffee - searched for a seat for a moment, but when she found the only available one, next to the student who had demanded all male Humans be eaten and all females be 'used for other activities', she almost pleadingly searched for another seat. Eventually she settled upon the seat next to the lecherous monster, who looked at her with a hunger in his eyes.

_Oh boy... _Silas thought, as the teacher began handing out assignments. He noticed how everyone else in the classroom was fawning over the newcomer, but they all seemed to back off when the lecher showed interest. _This... Is going to be one interesting venture._

* * *

A/N:

_Now, A lot of you might be wondering just why I gave Silas The Beast's powers.  
Outside of simple fascination with the implications of said decision, I have reasons for just about every single word in the above chapter. _


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 1

* * *

John VaSilas sat atop one of the many, branching rooftops of Yokai Academy. He saw many flat rooftops below him, but Human instinct was an interesting thing, branching all the way back to when Humans were covered in hair and were hunter-gatherers, basic instinct when one felt like one was in imminent danger was to climb a tree, people, then and now, generally didn't look up. Silas found himself sitting atop one of the spires of the castle-like school building, not because he felt like he was in danger, but rather because he felt safest when he was hundreds of feet in the air. A skill he'd learned during Empire, if he could gain an advantage in height, there was no enemy he could not defeat, Conduit or not.

The view from this vantage, one of the highest points in the school, wasn't as breathtaking as he'd thought it would be. His earlier use of the word 'dead' to describe the way the school appeared still rang true, but with the addition of what had to be thousands of students, it seemed livelier. That didn't detract from the one-track color scheme, however: Gray, black, and red in some places, were the only colors that greeted Silas' eyes, even the sky above him only turned a disgusting mixture of gray and red during the day.

Below him, the _very_ early morning risers were beginning their _very _early morning routines. Silas had quickly figured out this was some kind of boarding school, when they'd fed him lunch _and_ dinner, and when the crowds had led him to some enormous apartment buildings a few hundred yards from the main school. Silas had spent an hour trying to see if there was a room with his name magically on it, like there had been a class with his name in the roster, but when he hadn't found anything, he'd deigned to simply take the first room on the top floor of the boy's dorm. He had wrestled with choosing a room on the center floor, so he could flee in either direction - up or down - but in the end had chosen a top-room floor because he could smoke-dash upwards just as easily as he could drop downwards.

Any of Silas' remaining doubts about whether or not everyone in this school were of their respective rockers had been dashed completely his second day here. Silas could truthfully say he'd seen enormous, trash and scrap-metal covered golems, who could fling rocks at bullet-velocities, with their _minds,_ and he hadn't been too frightened, but when he'd seen a half dozen bipedal wolves, lizards, and creatures of varying makes and models that he couldn't properly describe, he'd had an interesting time of _not_ smoking for the hills as fast as he possibly could. Thankfully, the rule of staying in Human form was what was constantly saving Silas' ass, otherwise he would have an interesting time of explaining what he was, because, in the end, he'd come to decide that Conduits were essentially Humans, the differences between Humanity and Conduits being as subtle - but also as obvious - as the difference between Humans and Neanderthals: They definitely existed, but were all in all, _non_ existent. Of course, the fact that Silas could fling smoke and lighting from his hands made him wonder who was the real sub species, Sapiens, or Conduits?

Regardless, Silas' first week at Yokai had been about as eventful as any regular highschool, the only difference being that, when fights broke out - and they seemed to do so, here, with regularity - they got far more violent, far more quickly. Thankfully, Silas hadn't been a part of any of these fights, but he'd nearly had his arm torn off at the shoulder when he'd literally stumbled across a fight in progress. Silas' stoic nature, thankfully, kept many people from trying to pursue anything with him, though because they thought he was some sort of super-powerful monster, or because he simply wasn't worth their time, he wasn't sure. He had met a few people during his week here, but none of them had seemed interesting, point of fact, they seemed the exact opposite of interesting, they were downright _stupid,_ teenage quirks aside, half of the people here could probably be sent to an asylum and no one would do anything about it. He had even heard about some guy _killing_ another student, _dead,_ and no one had done anything about it, everyone just went along, business as usual. Silas had attended the funeral - or, burial, was a better word to describe it - out of a mixture of respect and pity.

A deep sigh left Silas' lungs before he pushed himself off of the edge of the roof he'd been sitting on. For two whole seconds he felt the wind rip and beat at his body, before he hit his static thrusters and landed on the ground about as hard as a skydiver would hit it with a parachute deployed. The display had caught an eye or two, but Silas ignored it and went for the cafeteria. If he would give this school anything, he would give it the fact that its food was far better than what he had been subsisting on the last few months.

Entering the cafeteria, Silas thankfully found it quiet and with only a dull roar of conversation. The night classes had finished probably an hour before he had awoken, and as such the straggling nocturnal monsters were just finishing their dinners, as the day-monsters entered for breakfast. Silas grabbed himself some waffles and a few slices of bacon, and took his customary seat in the corner of the room. From here he could watch everyone, and with a little focus, could listen in on nearly any conversation, and no one could sneak up on him, unless they were invisible, which he did _not_ discount the possibility of.

Picking at his waffles idly, Silas noticed the stillness in the air just a few seconds before he heard a rushing noise. He looked up and saw a table soaring through the air, directly for him. He blinked once before casually smoke-dashing out of the way of danger, reappearing several feet away, hands in his coat pockets, eyes lazily staring at the impact point. He stared at it for a moment before he looked to where the table came from, slightly surprised when he looked to notice that it hadn't been intended for him. Much the contrary, Saizo Komiya from his homeroom class was busy making a point to a bunch of smaller monsters. Being the stereotypical bully he was, Saizo had spent the last week 'earning' his respect by beating it out of anyone who looked at him funny, and to further cement his place on Silas' shit list was his treatment of his 'girlfriend', the pink-haired beauty of class 3-2, Moka Akashiya.

Silas remembered vividly the first time someone had 'encroached' upon Saizo's 'territory', rumor had it the guy was still in the hospital. Ever since then Moka had been showing up to class with a myriad of bruises adorning whatever parts of her body were visible, but no one did anything, because everyone seemed to fear the man that constantly had his arm draped around her. Silas, however, had no problem with bullies, and had many problem with people ruining his food, Prison Rules had been rapidly applied back in Empire, and food and water were amongst the very first things Silas had killed to protect.

So, Silas gathered an orb of smoke in his hand and blasted Saizo in the back of the head with it. Silas had long since made the distinguishing factor, he could certainly kill people with any of his powers, but Smoke was mostly used for escape and evasion, and stunning or non-lethal attacks, while Lighting and the 'other' power were used for lethal or high stakes battles, and simple destruction, respectively. Saizo's head shot forward and rocked backward from the impact, and the lunchroom went deathly silent.

The brown haired brute slowly turned to look to Silas, who simply stood there, unassuming, but challenging, look in his dark blue eyes. "Did you just -" Silas answered Saizo's question by blasting him again, this time in the face. "What the _fuck!?"_ The brute roared; playing Silent Bob, Silas responded by indicating the overturned table. It took Saizo's underdeveloped mind a few seconds to make the connection, "what, were you sitting there?" He demanded of the hooded Conduit, who nodded. Saizo chuckled, "not anymore." He turned around, but got another smoke blast, this time to his lower abdomen.

The stinging pain forced Saizo to turn around, but by the time he had done so Silas had smoke-dashed out of the nearest open window, knowing he left a confused and enraged Saizo, but not knowing he'd left an appreciative Moka.

* * *

Hours had passed since the 'incident' in the lunch room. Though few knew about it, Silas was privy to the rumors about his brief conflict with 3-2's resident bully, some were saying he was a will-o-the-wisp, due to his interesting escape, while some were saying he was a crossbreed between the wisp and some monster that could control fire, as 'evidenced' by the fact that Silas had blasted Saizo with _smoke,_ and not fire. Silas paid none of the rumors any heed, and class passed by uneventfully. Saizo had given Silas a death glare when he had entered the room, and Silas had noticed Moka was sporting a new set of bruises.

Several parts of Silas' mind were all but demanding Silas stand up for the abused monster, reasoning that it was no different than a wife-beater back home. But, in response, the survival-oriented parts of his mind were reminding him that he was a Human in a school where it was openly admitted Humans would be executed upon discovery. If he stood up for Moka and fought Saizo, rumors would fly far faster and far _farther_ than they had because of Silas' retaliation this morning, and his 'cover' could be blown wide open.

Class had passed by uneventfully, though Silas had noticed a few eyes had stuck to him like glue. He recognized one or two sets, Moka's and the girl he'd met during orientation, being among them. One woman was openly ogling him by the end of the day, however, she had long, blue hair and breasts so impossibly large that Silas couldn't help but stare for a moment or two, debating whether or not they were even real, or if the monster was some sort of illusionist. The word 'succubus' had also entered Silas' mind, when he thought of the big breasted teen, he thought that description could hold the most weight - no pun intended - because everything about the girl's appearance screamed 'seductress', and the gaggle of guys she kept with her at all times did nothing to dispute the fact; but in the end he didn't care, as long as she didn't try and steal his soul, he'd be fine.

_Of course..._ Silas thought with a grin, _maybe she'll fuck up and take out the Beast..._ He chuckled lightly, taking a sip of the cola he'd bought out of the vending machine he leaned up against. Empire - and even afterwards - had taught Silas many things about what became necessary for survival, and stealing had been one of those things. He'd thrown up the first time he used his smoke powers to rob a boarded up corner store for everything he could use: Food and Water to eat, money to store _and_ use as kindling, the whole nine yards. But as time went on, he became desensitized to the act, seeing it as a necessary one. Silas didn't know how much money he had stashed in his sling bag, but he knew he had far more than any middle-class teenager of comparable age.

"Excuse me..." He heard a light, effeminate voice speak.

Without looking, Silas apologized and got off of the machine, taking another swig of his soda. This last week at Yokai had been _surprisingly_ normal, if he would say so himself, in spite of the regular slip-ups of the students' disguises, and the frequent fights that devolved into animalistic brawls, it felt like a normal high school.

He heard the vending machine buzz, and the voice groaned slightly in disapproval. Silas looked at it, he saw, to his slight surprise, Moka Akashiya, standing next to him, staring at the offending machine as it told her she didn't have enough money for her drink.

"What're you trying to get?" He asked the pink-haired teen.

"Tomato juice..." She said slowly, her tone telling Silas that she was both uncomfortable speaking to him, and fearful that speaking to him would get one or the both of them a well-rounded beating. "Saizo took most of my money..." Her words got quieter and quieter as she spoke, to the point that even Silas' enhanced hearing had to strain to understand her.

"He takes your _money?"_ Asked a floored Conduit.

Moka nodded, and looked at Silas, before she visibly recoiled, as if just recognizing the hooded man. Silas didn't react to her reaction, outside of the uniform pants and shirt, he didn't respect the school's uniform policy, only using what he couldn't go without; he planned on visiting the school store and hunting for some jeans and some more T-Shirts soon.

"You're..." She said lightly, her bright green eyes taking in every one of the shrouded details of Silas' face. "You're that boy..."

_The one you damn near ran over?_ Silas blinked, "yeah... I think we're in the same class." He said, offering her his gloved hand. He had no idea if he could leach Monster powers the same way he could Conduit powers, but he took no chances, and had bought a new pair of thick, resilient, but electiricity-conducting leather gloves the second he could. "John VaSilas." He greeted, "my friends just call me Silas." He emphasized the word friend, but left no explanation as to why, preferring the girl in front of him to draw her own conclusions.

"M... Moka." She shook his hand, her grip delicate, but stiff, Silas wondered if her hand was injured in some way. "Moka Aashiya."

"Nice to meet you Moka." Said Silas with a nod, before he looked closely at the machine, she was missing ten cents. "I can spot you a dime, if you answer me one question."

The girl looked hopeful, but also reserved. "Yes?"

Bluntly, Silas asked, "why do you hang out with that prick?" He finished off his cola and crushed the can, "why not just go monster and kick his ass?" He tossed the can into the nearby trash bin.

Moka looked at Silas innocently, as he dug in his back pocket for a dime. "Prick?" Silas didn't notice the odd look she was giving him, or the fact that she was inhaling deeply through her nose.

"Yeah, Prick. Saizo." Silas apprehended the fleeing dime and sent him on a one-way trip to the vending machine. Moka grabbed her tomato juice, but didn't open it.

"It's not like I can refuse him..."

"But... You _can._ You're not a Human, lady, you're a monster, can't you just go all action-girl and kick his ass six ways from sunday?" Silas asked.

Slowly, Moka shook her head, "no..." She indicated the rosary hanging from her neck, "this restricts my monster powers, with it on, I can't turn into my true form."

_Insert Dragonball Z joke here._ Thought Silas, as he looked at the Rosary. "So take it off." He said simply.

Moka shook her head, "it's not that simple... I'm a... Well, different monster, this keeps the... Other side of me in check."

Silas could, on some level, relate to the girl. The deep rumbling he felt in his chest reminded him of the exact reason as to why he could relate to her. "So that thing's just caging the beast? It _can't_ come off?" Silas wondered.

Moka hesitated, but finally said, with a shaky voice, "yes."

Silas knew she was lying, but in the end decided not to pursue it. The two lapsed into a silence for a few awkward moments, before Moka said, out of the blue. "What kind of monster are you?"

Silas blinked, but was prepared. "Aren't we not supposed to reveal those kinds of things?" He asked, a coy grin playing its way across his features.

"Well... I was just wondering... Because I've never seen a monster do things like you did this morning... And..." She rubbed her bruised arm, an embarrassed look on her face.

"And?"

"You smell like a Human."

Silas paused there, that had been the second time someone had commented on his smell, but he'd long since showered since then, was his 'Human' smell that overpowering? Slowly, he answered the monster, "I... Was raised around Humans for most of my life." Somewhere in the back of his mind it only now clicked that Moka was alone, with him, with_out_ her 'boyfriend'. "Must've picked up the smell."

"I see..." Moka said slowly, before she cracked open her can of tomato juice and slowly began drinking.

The two lapsed once more into an uncomfortable silence, one the Conduit was all too willing to break. "Well, listen, I've got to run back to my dorm room, do homework and all that." He lied, this school had played out like all others: the work was simple, especially for his now _super_ Human mind, he'd done his homework for the day simply to have something to do before the class let out; he made a mental note to check if the school had wi-fi, maybe he could bum a few books off of the internet, onto his iPod.

"Oh... Okay..." Moka looked a little downcast.

Silas inwardly sighed, unable to see the girl look so depressed. "But uh... Listen, if Saizo ever becomes too much for you, or you just need to get away from it all, visit my place. A Building, room six-twelve, I'll see if I can't entertain you for a while." He offered.

Moka nodded, a light smile playing her features. "Thank you."

Silas nodded too, and after a few moments, bid Moka farewell and walked to the dorms.

* * *

Entering his dorm, Silas closed the door with a light click. The lights were off, but with a quick flip of a switch, his bare-bonesed room was revealed to his eyes. Yellow wall paint, a bare futon mattress, a closet with his clothes in it, and a fully equipped bathroom to his left, this was home. With a light sigh, Silas flopped down into bed. He was still getting used to the fact that he had an actual bed to sleep in, a pillow to lay his head on, and blankets to curl up under, ever since he'd fled Empire, the closest semblance to that he'd gotten was his sling bag.

In all honesty, Silas wasn't tired at all, he knew he had a few hours until dinner and he had some personal hygiene issues to deal with, but he simply felt tired, unwilling to do anything. After a few minutes, Silas' mind began wandering, he wondered what the DUP was up to, but he soon found himself thinking about Moka. He didn't believe for one second that her monster form was being sealed away by her rosary, sure it might be doing something to help, but unless it came out of the Pope's own secret stash, he was certain that there was something else to what she had told him.

_Wonder what kind of monster she could be._ Thought the Conduit, as he forced himself up into a sitting position. _Might be she's just some kind of weak monster... Like those Aura conduits back in Empire, not too much of a threat if one applied himself._ He withdrew his hood and ran his gloved hand through his hair, undoing a few knots as he did so.

After a few moments of blankly staring at the floor, he decided he would simply buckle down and try and clean himself. One of the worst parts of his newfound electrokinetic powers was his weakness to water, anything more than a cupfull, if it splashed on him, hurt like being whipped. Water seemed to simply reduce his tolerance to electricity all the way down to zero, so when he was soaked, electricity hurt like a bee sting, or a gunshot. To compensate for this, he had taken to taking spongebaths, but even they hurt almost consistently when he tried them.

He paused a moment, after entering the bathroom, he stared at his shirtless upper half. His chest was riddled with scars aplenty, a lot of them having come from Empire, but many more having come from what came after Empire. He had one scar in particular, that stretched from the lower left side of his chest all the way up to his right shoulder, it was the most visible scar and though it had long since healed, a nervous habit had formed in Silas of rubbing it.

Silas stared at his scarred chest for a few more moments before he shrugged off the feeling of nostalgia, before he pushed back the slowly building memories. In their place, he turned on the faucet, the noise completely drowning out the sounds outside of his room, of fist hitting flesh.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 2

* * *

_The phone rang, interrupting his game. A groaning teenager reached forward and snatched up his cell phone, seeing it was his mother, most likely calling to check in on him, he picked it up. _

_"Hello?" He asked in a light, friendly tone. _

_"John? It's mom." _

_"Hey mom." Said the teen, setting down the controller and leaning back into the couch. "What's up?" _

_"Just checking in on you." Said his mother, her voice low and womanly, but still light enough to be friendly. "That pizza come out okay?" _

_"I didn't burn anything down, if that's what you're asking." The pale skinned teen grinned as his mother groaned. _

_"You know what I mean, smartass." His mother said, as the teen got to his feet and stretched his back. He walked to the edge of their apartment as his mom continued speaking, "I just got off the phone with your father, he said he's going to be covering for a friend of his tonight, so neither of us will be home until well after dark." She trailed off, leaving her first born to finish her thoughts.  
_

_"Don't answer the door, don't answer the phone." Said the teenager automatically, as he looked out the window. _

_The view outside was beautiful, for a city-scape, anyways. The sky was just beginning to darken as the sun set, and off in the distance he could see a news helicopter passing over the city. _

_His mother chuckled, "alright, just wanted to let you know, I'll -" The phone went dead just a split second before the entire house went dark. _

_The teenager, phone still held against his ear, looked up and around, startled. "The fuck?" The ground shook violently as something slammed into the building, the teenager saw a bright blue flash from the other side of the apartment, so, racing over, he ripped open the curtains, to be greeted by an enormous, bright blue dome coming from the Historic district. It was like something out of a movie, expanding as it seemed to suck in the energy of the world around it. _

_"What the - fuck!" The teenager exclaimed, running away from the window just as he caught sight of a car flying through the air. Fortunately for the teenager, his fears that it would hit his building were unfounded, but the ground continued shaking and the bright dome only got brighter. The teenager swore he could hear the sounds of the people outside as they screamed in their death throes, so in a fit of panic, the teenager ran to his room, barricading the door with his bed and drawing shut the blinds, silently sobbing just as something _did_ slam into his building, the flaming vehicle coming to stop just a few inches before the terrified teenager's face, the metal so hot that he could almost feel his skin searing -_

* * *

_"Gah!"_ Shouted John VaSilas, unintentionally sending a lighting bolt into the far wall of his dorm room.

Breathing deeply, quickly, it took Silas a few moments before it finally registered that he wasn't in Empire. Far from it, he was in school, a school for monsters, ghouls, goblins and other such gruesome beings. He remembered thinking the conduits in the Warren had been bad, he chuckled and looked around. His room was dark, nearly pitch black, save for the solitary source of light on his desk, the alarm clock that had been provided with the room. He stared at it for a moment, focusing his tired vision, it was seven in the morning. Silas groaned, flopping back down on his pillow, he'd woken up at seven each morning for the last week, yes, but today was Sunday, they - apparently - didn't have school on Sunday. Silas had been looking forward to sleeping in, but now that idea had been shot, and it was far too early for breakfast, even if he mooched off of the night-classes and stole some second-dinner.

Groaning as he got to a sitting position, Silas rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. His hair fell down in front of his face, covering much of it in detailless shadows, but not proving to be a nuisance to his attempts to wake up. Silas inhaled deeply, and exhaled just as deeply, trying to get some of the chilly air of his dormroom into his lungs, to shock his body back to consciousness.

Silas placed his hand against his lips, first and second fingers parted as if he were smoking a cigarette. A habit he'd fallen into, Silas often used his smoke powers to puff out a small blast of smoke, much like how smokers would when they tried to form shapes. Silas was no Gandalf, but he could make a few circles with his own meager smoking skills. Doing so calmed his nerves, gave his mind something to focus on and required the smallest amount of concentration, all things he needed to wake up. Three exhales later and a few rings of smoke hung loosely in the air, slowly dissipating as time went on.

Silas shook his head and swept his hand through his hair, before he finally forced himself onto his feet and went through his morning routine, deciding today was a good day for a walk; it wasn't like he had any friends to hang out with, anyways.

* * *

Yokai Academy's forest hadn't changed one bit since he'd last walked through it. Silas, hood drawn and gloved hands in his jacket pockets, was walking through the dead forest silently, listening to the music on his iPod as he did so. With Tenacious D playing a personal concert right in his ears, many would think the Conduit could be vulnerable to attack, but his senses were far too attuned to his surroundings for something like that.

Case in point, when Silas felt the chilly feeling creeping down his spine, the very same feeling he got when he knew he was being watched, he could all but tell where the culprit was. However, the same voice in the back of his mind that had told him so many times before, was subtly telling the Conduit that this presence behind him, it wasn't stalking him out of malicious intent, like a Sniper would; much the contrary, Silas thought he could sense curiosity in the air, as if whoever was following him was following him simply because he or she was interested. As the Conduit continued walking, he debated internally on whether or not he should simply smoke-dash out of here, or allow the figure to follow him, and see where things led.

His question was answered, however, by a rather loud scream. A startled Conduit smoke-dashed in the direction of the scream, cutting the dash just at the border of a clearing in the forest. Hidden behind the thick trunk of a tree, Silas observed what was going on with a general air of indifference. In the center of a group of cackling monsters was a wolf, though Silas was somehow able to distinguish feminine characteristics from her, slowly coming to the conclusion that the wolf in the center of a half dozen lizard men was, in fact, a wolf _woman._

_Oh... Man._ Thought Silas, as he watched the Lizards practically play with the wolf, _I let this go on, someone will get hurt... Probably the girl, probably get raped._ He reasoned, seeing the hungry look in the Lizard's eyes. _But.._. _If I interfere, I'll put my hide on the line, I'll be risking my life, risking my identity... For... What, exactly? _He thought, staring hard at the spectacle.

The wolf woman cried out when a lizard made a pass at her ass, the lizard got slapped violently, but he seemed only to be further aroused by the action. One of them made a comment about how the woman had stepped into their territory, and had no chance of winning, while another mentioned how long it had been since he'd seen such a nice 'tail', though Silas honestly couldn't distinguish whether the Lizard meant the girl's actual tail, or her lady parts.

_Ugh... I can't just -_ Thought Silas, as he rounded the tree, only to freeze when he saw a new player enter the field.

The newcomer, a tall man, most probably older than Silas, walked casually into the clearing. He completely ignored the lizards, instead heading for the wolf woman. The man had dirty blonde hair and pointed ears, and wore dark gray robes, with some sort of policeman's badge on his chest. He kindly spoke to the wolf maiden, "are you alright, miss?" He asked, his voice calm and polite.

"I... I..." The woman was very obviously flustered by the man's appearance, though Silas had no idea why.

_Might be because of the badge..._ Silas thought, retreating back behind his tree.

"Are these men trying to hurt you?" The blonde slowly looked around the clearing, eying each lizard individually, they all visibly cowered at his glare.

"y... Yes." The wolf said, her voice far deeper than any woman Silas had ever heard, but it still contained a hint of femininity.

Silas suddenly felt a bad feeling in his gut, like there was somewhere else he should be looking. He scanned the treeline, but couldn't see anyone else.

"What exactly are they trying to do?" The man kindly asked, his voice still the epitome of calm.

"They tried to... To..." The wolf looked more and more uncomfortable with each spoken word.

"If you feel uncomfortable, whisper it in my ear." The man leaned down.

Silas immediately honed in on what was giving him the horrid feeling, just as it leapt out from the woods. Another lizard, this one far bigger than the others, leaped out of the forest, claws razor sharp and aimed right for the unsuspecting blonde. He roared a battle cry as he flew, obviously intending to catch the blonde by surprise. Silas had other plans, and the bolt of lighting that flew from his outstretched hand and slammed into the chest of the flying lizard agreed. His cover blown, Silas slowly walked out into the clearing, right hand still outstretched, electricity arcing all the way up to his shoulder. The robed man seemed intrigued, but was more focused upon what the wolf said to him.

"This woman states you six were in the process of an attempted rape... What say you in your defense?" The man asked calmly, straightening up as he spoke.

Three of the Lizards acted on impulse and attacked the blonde, the last three ran for the woods, all seeming to decide to run straight for the Conduit. Silas reacted instantaneously, his electricity covered fist slammed into the face of one lizard, knocking it out cold. He dodged a swipe from a second and sent it flying with a shockwave, before he blasted the third in the face with a bolt of lightning. Silas turned to face the robed man, intending to help, but he was greeted with the sight of two smoldering, cooked lizards, and one trying in vain to break the student's grip.

"In light of the evidence..." The blonde said, "you face a guilty verdict." Silas only had a second to blink before the lizard was lit on fire, the flames white hot and billowing in a superheated guyser as the student screamed in pain. It only took the student a few moments to die completely, leaving a cowering wolf-woman and a befuddled Conduit.

Silas stared at the smoldering corpses, but he heard movement to his left, and saw the lizard he'd punched trying to crawl away. Silas made it one step forward, intent on restraining the lizard with his electricity, but in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, a blast of fire soared forth faster than a bullet and set the lizard ablaze. Two more cracks in the air told him the other two had been met with the same, sudden fate.

Silas felt a chill run down his spine, he looked at the blonde, who was regarding him with interest. "I thank you for the assistance... Mister..." Silas gave the man a once over, that funny little voice in his mind that always gave him bad ideas had been suddenly shut up, drowned out completely by the far more useful voice, which told Silas that this was a man _not_ to be trifled with, by any means.

_Could I even beat this guy, with smoke and electricity?_ Silas thought, "Err.. VaSilas." He said, "John VaSilas." He looked into the man's beige eyes, but could not, in any way shape or form, read his thoughts, which set off a lot of alarm bells in his mind.

The fire-wielder nodded, and held his hand up, silently telling Silas that he intended to speak with him further. "Ma'am, these were all the men that attempted to rape you, yes?" She nodded furiously, slowly metamorphosing back to a Human as she did so, Silas noted with slight interest how her uniform seemed to morph along with her body. "I see... Then there is nothing else to worry about, I recommend you either refrain from late night walks, or do so with members of your own species, there is great strength to be had in numbers." The blonde cast a quick glance at Silas, and then at the charred and cindered corpses on the ground. "Not like they -" He was interrupted by the Burly Lizard, who had been spared the fire wielder's wrath, and was now wielding a thick branch.

The annoyed fire wielder set the branch on fire.

The surprised conduit zapped the Lizard with a several deca-thousand volt bolt.

The resultant explosion, quite literally, tore off the Lizard's arm, which had been almost instantaneously cauterized, and thus, it leaked no blood. The horrified Lizard finally decided further combat held no gains, and ran as fast as they could.

The Blonde stared after the lizard. "Not like they would benefit from such a strength." He finished, "run along, now, breakfast will begin in an hour." The wolf nodded, thanked 'Kuyou' profusely, and sprinted away.

The robed fire-wielder stared after the wolf for a few moments. Silas did not like the silence that resulted, and made to turn and leave, but the man interrupted him. "I'm afraid I have you at a disadvantage, John, for I know your name and you do not mine." Silas turned around and suddenly the blonde was in front of him, albeit at a respectable distance, his hand outstretched. "Kuyou." He said, a light smile on his face, "Kuyou Tanzin."

Silas stared at Kuyou for a moment, before he accepted the hand. "My friends call me Silas." He responded, shaking the hand, and noting that he felt the heat of the man's skin even through his glove, and also noting the strength of his grip.

Kuyou nodded and, after releasing Silas' hand, nodded to the edge of the forest. "Are you aware you were being followed?"

Silas nodded back, "I was going to see what that was about, but then... Well... I ordered Fried Lizard."

Kuyou seemed to smile at that, "speaking of... I haven't ever heard of a species that can manipulate lightning as you... And rumor has it a hooded monster had deftly manipulated smoke, just last morning."

Silas stared up at Kuyou, who was a good foot taller than him. "So?"

"You wouldn't happen to be that hooded, smoke-wielding student, would you?" The man asked, innocently.

_Do... Not... Lie... To this man._ Was the only thing running through Silas' suddenly blank mind. "Yeah, what about it?"

Kuyou shrugged, "like I said, I've never seen a monster who could manipulate Lightning before... But smoke as well? I must ask, now, what kind of monster are you?"

_About how fast could I reach the tunnel if I started smoking there **now?**_ Silas wondered, "isn't it against school rules to reveal your species?" He deflected.

The man grinned, "a good answer." He said, "however, as you... May soon learn, when one is in the Public Safety Commission, rules can be more easily broken."

"Public Safety?" In the back of his mind Silas was trying to figure out why he thought those words translated to 'Gestapo' in another language. "School needs its own police force?"

"Well, when one puts so many monsters in one place, violence is bound to happen, frequently." Said Kuyou, as he beckoned Silas to follow him. "And with the possibility existing that numerous A and S class monsters could exist under the same roof, an organization was founded... To keep the peace, you see."

Silas nodded, it made sense, after all. "I guess you're a part of this commission, then?"

Kuyou nodded, "yes. I'm the head of it, actually." He mentioned offhandedly.

This caught Silas' attention, "what was the head of the PSC doing out at seven in the morning on a Sunday?"

"An Enforcer's work is never done." Said Kuyou, as the school's skyline came into view. "If you look hard enough, you may in fact see more of us now that you are aware, than before." Silas thought on that and, suddenly, realized he had, in fact, seen these robes before.

But that still begged the question, "but violence still runs rampant, here." He commented.

"We deal with the more... Existential threats. Small scuffles in the hallways, while within our jurisdiction, are nothing to be worried about."

"But an attempted rape in the middle of the woods is?"

"I simply happened to be passing by... A lot like you, actually." Kuyou commented.

Silas shrugged at that, "you've got me there, Kuyou." He said, as they breached the perimeter of the woods and made their way onto school grounds. "So I don't think I've seen you in any classes..." He mentioned, after a moment's thought.

"This month is my first shift of the year, I get next off to catch up with my studies... That is how things generally work, and unless there is an emergency, it does not change." Kuyou explained, "this is where we part ways, I'm afraid." He said, "the offices are that way."

"What, fire guys don't eat?" Chuckled the Conduit, as they came to a halt.

"I already ate." Kuyou said, extending his hand again. "It was interesting meeting you, John... I hope we meet again under better circumstances."

Silas thought a moment, before he smiled and nodded. "Me too, man." He accepted the hand and shook, "me too." And with that, the two separated, with Kuyou headed to the Public Safety offices, and Silas headed for the cafeteria.

* * *

Sitting down in the cafeteria, in his usual place, which had - surprisingly - been cleaned up and repaired completely since the previous morning, Silas mechanically ate his toast, still unable to get the feeling that he was being watched out of his mind. The dawn had passed and now the sky was its usual red/gray dingy tone, bringing a great source of natural light into the cafeteria, which was slowly filling up. Silas had his hood drawn and his head low, but he could still see all that was going on around him.

So when a particularly pissed Saizo Komiya entered the room, he wasn't surprised in the slightest. Saizo looked behind him and yanked his girlfriend inside with him, eliciting a painful streak from the freshly bruised teenager. Saizo looked around the room for a solid minute, before his dark brown eyes locked onto Silas' hood. The brutish teenager stalked over to the unassuming hooded man, who continued to eat his breakfast, acting as if he didn't notice it when Saizo yanked Moka along with him.

_"Sit!" _Saizo shoved Moka into a seat at the table, and uncouthly crashed into a seat next to her, directly in front of the hooded Conduit. He stared at Silas, "did I hear right? Were you talking to _my_ woman yesterday?"

"Shut up, bean dip, I'm eating." Mumbled the Conduit through a mouthfull of food.

Saizo ignored him, "and I'm _pretty god damn sure_ it was you who blasted me in the face yesterday morning!" He said, loudly and angrily, though thankfully his voice didn't drown out the dull roar of the cafeteria.

"Is it true guys burp when you blast 'em in the face?" Silas asked.

"Well there aren't any damn teachers around this time, and all the windows are locked _tight!"_ Saizo growled.

"Saizo, please -" Moka whimpered.

_"Shut up, bitch!"_ Saizo barked, before turning to Silas. "I'll give you the choice, quick, or slow?"

Silas looked up, but instead of looking at Saizo, his eye was attracted to the robed figure behind him. He blinked once before the figure spoke. "Saizo Komiya."

Saizo whipped around, _"what?!"_ He growled, losing a bit of steam when he came face to face with the black robes of a school enforcer.

"I'm more than certain you don't want to start trouble with a friend of the Enforcers... Especially in a public place." She said, breakfast tray in hand.

At this point, Silas had to get a snarky comment in. "Uh oh, Saizo, looks like someone figured out about all the guys who've been blasting you in the face." He chuckled, grinning genuinely when he noticed the suppressed smile on the pink-haired woman's face.

Saizo made to angrily retort, but after a zipping noise, his mouth was covered in a substance neither student could recognize. The Enforcer spoke clearly, "I think you're in my seat, by the way."

A fuming brute simply resorted to giving Silas a death glare, before he angrily yanked Moka off of her seat and exited the cafeteria. Silas looked up and got a good look at his savior, a purple haired, purple _eyed_ woman who was probably a good inch or two taller than him. She had fair skin and a look in her eyes that reeked of power, though unlike the look in Saizo's eyes, the purple haired girl seemed like she'd earned her power.

"Does word travel around that fast, or did you just decide I looked like I needed saving?" Silas finally asked, taking another spoonfull of his cereal.

"Neither, actually, I ran into Kuyou on my way to breakfast, he said you were an interesting monster, and I'd do well to at least speak to you." She said, as she cut into a food Silas couldn't at all identify. "And you'll learn very soon, if Kuyou suggests you do something, you'd do your best to do it."

Silas shrugged, and nodded out of lack of any other available response. "John VaSilas." He extended his gloved hand.

The robed woman accepted it with a bone-crushing grip, that Silas tried but ultimately failed to return. "Keito Koyama."

_What is it with all the Japanese sounding names here, and all the English speaking people?_ Silas absently wondered, "for the record, I didn't need any help."

"I know." Said Keito, "I almost laughed at your burp joke." She grinned, Silas noticed she looked slightly menacing when she did so, but he couldn't deny she also looked kind of cute.

Silas chuckled, "the thug's so stupid it probably won't register for a few hours, at least."

Keito nodded, "indeed."

The two lapsed into a silence as they ate their meals. Silas finished his first and stretched his back once he put his spoon down. The cafeteria now fully packed, he noticed that most everyone had ganged up into their own circles of friends, with that blue-haired girl from his homeroom taking up a majority of the Cafeteria's male population.

"I'm pretty sure that one's a Succubus." Keito commented.

"Which one?"

"The one with tits large enough to be used as basketballs." Keito said, "I know you're looking at her."

Silas chuckled, "I think the more appropriate term was 'gazing at', I just happened to be noticing her harem of guys, is all." He paused, "I got the same idea, by the way... Succubus." He nodded, "all of those guys look entirely robbed of their souls."

Keito chuckled, "indeed they do. I'll let you in on a hint, the Enforcers are considering intervening with her, if she keeps trying to seduce the school's male population."

"Oh?"

"Yes. As amusing as it is, watching the boys swoon over her, it gets annoying after a while..." Keito gave Silas a once over, "I'm surprised she hasn't tried to seduce you, yet."

Thinking about it, Silas thought the same thing. Eyebrow raised, he nodded, "how do you know she already hasn't?" He asked with a toothy grin.

"Your eyes still have their souls and..." Keito inhaled deeply, and paused. "You know... You smell odd."

Silas stared at her blankly.

"Like... Smoke?" She tilted her head, "you don't smoke, do you? That is against school rules."

_I can work with that, actually... At least she didn't say I smell Human._ "Well, I don't know what you're talking about -" Silas purposefully coughed up a lungfull of air turned smoke, "- seriously... No idea." He grinned again, with the grin growing wider at the slightly annoyed, yet also amused look Keito gave him.

"What do you plan on doing the rest of today?" She asked, innocently enough.

"Probably stop by my homeroom teacher and grab the club listings... That's supposed to be soon, I think, so I might as well get a head start, know what to look for." Silas responded, saying the first thing that came to mind, that sounded reasonable.

Keito narrowed her eyes, slightly, as she finished her meal. "You do not plan on joining the newspaper club, do you?"

Silas shrugged, "maybe, if it seems interesting."

"I would advise against that." The purple haired monster said quickly, "they and the Enforcers have a... Tense relationship."

Silas nodded, "I'll keep that in mind." He said, before he sighed, "well, it was fun talking to you, but I've got to stop by my dorm room." He said, extending his hand again as he got to his feet.

Keito shook it, "the pleasure was mine." She said, with a nod.

* * *

Silas walked silently to his dorm. The mornings in Yokai Academy were far different from the mornings back home, here there were no birds tweeting or insects chirping, rather there was just a chill in the air and a slight mist hanging there, unassumingly, as if it belonged and nothing was wrong with its presence. Silas paid none of it any mind, nor did he pay any mind to the odd smacking sound he heard, reasoning that it was just a crow beating its wings.

Silas' mind was more focused on the events of this morning, and what had happened as a result. Kuyou was an interesting character, he had no problem with asserting his power over the school's rule breakers, though Silas questioned the morality of killing them outright. Even if thy were would-be rapists, they still deserved a trial, right? Some kind of sentencing by a jury of their peers.

There was the smacking noise again, he noticed, as he came closer to the dull gray dorm building.

And how Keito had spoken of him, saying that one would do well to do _whatever_ he said. How much authority and respect did Kuyou hold? Furthermore, how much of said authority came from his killing of students? Was that just an out-of-context isolated incident, or was that a common occurrence? Silas didn't know what to think about that, regularly burning students alive with white-hot flames. He knew his smoke was pretty hot, and if he hit some bone-dry wood he could probably start a few fires, but he wouldn't be burning anyone alive with it.

Another smacking noise, did Silas hear a crack along with it?

And then there was Keito, where was she on the food chain, compared to Kuyou? And what was with that... Material she had slapped onto Saizo's mouth? Silas couldn't help but wonder if she was some kind of spider-woman, because the material did share a few similarities with -

Now the sound of cloth tearing joined the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

"The fuck?" Silas turned around and jogged around the corner of the building.

Silas was greeted with a disgusting sight. There was Saizo, half naked, standing over a crying, struggling Moka, whose clothes were in tatters.

_"Come on,_ bitch! You know you want it!" The thug yelled, hungrily, "stop... Fucking... _Struggling!"_

_Oh, you've done fucked up now, son._ Thought Silas, as he gathered an orb of smoke in his hand, and savagely shot it towards Saizo.

The smoke slammed into the back of his head with a loud poof sound, making an audible impact as it slammed into Saizo's head. Saizo whipped around, to be greeted with Silas smoke dashing right past him. By the time Saizo figured out what happened, and had turned around, he saw Sils standing over Moka, hand out stretched.

"Come on." Silas said, almost silently. "You don't -" Saizo's battle cry gave him away, and Silas dodged his punch with another smoke dash. This time he shot Saizo with a bolt of electricity, and when Saizo turned around swinging, Silas took his original position above Moka. "- need to entertain this guy anymore."

Saizo growled and made a grab for Silas, who dashed away just as he felt Saizo's hand brush against his coat. Silas reappeared a few feet behind Saizo, rolling his shoulders as he got ready for the inevitable conflict. Silas had no idea what kind of monster Saizo was, but he most likely relied on brawn, which meant his speed, maneuverability, and intelligence would all be sorely lacking. With a liberal application of smoke dashing, and a powerful usage of electric bolts, he could have the fight won.

_Of course..._ Thought Silas, as he eyed the cowering Moka's rosary, _there is a point I should probably try and make. _His eyes shifted from the Rosary to the angry thug.

"You... _Trash!"_ Saizo growled, Silas only now noticed how his mouth was still covered in the material it had been shot with earlier in the morning. _"You'll regret -"_ He was interrupted with a blast of smoke to the face, Saizo coughed violently as some of the sulfur and ash went straight down his windpipe.

"You've got one way out of this." Silas said simply.

Growling, Saizo responded by shifting into his monster form. It was an ugly, brutish thing, much like the man himself. He grew about three feet and his muscles doubled in size. His eyes narrowed on Silas, and he grinned as he felt power running through his veins.

Silas prepared a shockwave, "that wasn't it." He blasted the orc away from the girl, and dashed over to take his spot. Silas extended his hand, which Moka slowly, carefully accepted, while her free arm covered her exposed bra. Silas didn't ogle, but when Moka got to her feet, he did grab the Rosary far faster than she had been prepared for. With a quick, almost haphazard yank, it came free. Silas stared at it, and noticed how the red snake-eye in the jewel seemed to fade to black. Silas looked back at a gaping Moka, " 'doesn't come off'... My... _Ass!"_ He said, stuffing it in his jacket pocket. "Now are you going to stand there, or are you going to help me kick _his_ ass?" He asked, sending a bolt of lightning Saizo's way, keeping the stunned monster pinned to the ground.

Silas had expected a dramatic transformation, perhaps something worthy of a billion dollar special effects movie. Instead, however, he simply got a color transition and some proportion change. Moka's once bright pink hair seemed to melt off all of its color, now appearing as silver as silk. Her once green eyes darkened to a blood red, with snake-like slits replacing the black orbs in the center. And her modest 'assets' became even more so.

The now transformed Moka stared at Silas expectantly, albeit blankly. "Did you wake me up?" Asked Moka with a powerful, womanly voice.

Silas thought he heard Saizo shout something about an 'S-Class Monster'. "Yep." Silas said simply. "How do you people do it, draw straws, or -" The monster didn't wait for him to finish, she looked at Saizo and suddenly the tired look in her eyes became filled with hatred and vengeance.

"And he is the one who has been beating my outer self... Yes?"

Silas looked over at Saizo, who, while he had recovered, looked stunned, to say the least. "Yeah."

Moka looked from Saizo to Silas, back to Saizo, and nodded. Saizo seemed to sense the ass kicking that was starting to head his way, and blindly charged the Conduit and the Monster, roaring about how he didn't care what species they were, he would kill them all the same. The response would make Silas laugh in the future. Silas raised his hand and fired a nearly continuous stream of electricity, slamming into the orc like a thousand tasers and cooking him almost like how Kuyou had done earlier the morning. Moka, on the other hand, simply walked forward and, when she came within striking distance of Saizo, kicked him, as hard as she possibly could, in the face. Silas _heard_ Saizo's skull crack from the impact, and heard several other bones break when Saizo hit the girl's dorm. Moka didn't stop there, however, and in a moment she was above Saizo, who was promptly tossed to the ground, before his face was viciously stomped on again and again.

_"Whoa!"_ Silas couldn't hold back, once he saw blood begin to fly. _"Damn!"_ He shouted when he heard the horrifying crunching sound of bones being repeatedly broken. Moka slammed her foot into Saizo's burst head one last time, and looked like she was finished, but her eyes traveled downwards to Saizo's groin, and Silas saw what she was going to do an instant before she did it. _"OH! DAMN!" _Silas instinctually covered his own manhood when Moka literally ripped Saizo's off and threw it as far as she could.

Silas let Moka have a moment, as she stared viciously at the corpse beneath her. Finally she looked up, and in an instant, was in front of him. Silas repressed a recoil, but couldn't help but stare at her, wide-eyed. He had seen many a varied death in his day, but this had been the first time he'd been present for a curb-stomping disembowelment. He could honestly say he hoped he never saw it again.

"So... You aren't going to do that to me... Right?" Silas clarified.

"No." The new Moka said simply, "much to the contrary, I owe you a great debt." She took a step closer, invading Silas' personal space as she did so. "If you hadn't removed my Rosary, and if you hadn't acted when you did, he would have done reprehensible things to my other self."

_You mean the nice one?_ Silas thought, his gaze traveling down to her blood and brain covered legs. "You mean -"

"You..." Moka's arms were suddenly wrapped around Silas' neck, "smell..." She said, slowly and lowly, before she removed a stunned Conduit's hood. _"Intoxicating."_ She sunk her teeth into his neck.

_Wait..._ _**What?!**_That was each and every single alarm bell going off in Silas' head. He didn't even allow himself time to register the surprisingly good feeling of having his blood forcibly drawn from his neck, he acted on instinct, and his instinct was to punch, as hard and as electrically charged as he could.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 3

* * *

Moka hadn't seen the punch coming, the taste of the monster's blood had been just as delicious as it had smelled. Coupled with her lethargy, many of her finer instincts had been dulled. The formerly hooded monster's fist slammed into her gut, it was nowhere near as powerful as her sister's punches, but the added factor of electricity was what brought a lot of the damage. The force of the impact forced her to let go of his neck, which gave him an opportunity he capitalized on by slamming his other fist, this one covered in _smoke,_ of all things, into her face. This impact burned like a hot knife, almost complimenting the gripping, biting pain of being electrocuted. With a few inches made between them, the monster finished off his assault by planting his electrified boot on her chest and sending her back several feet.

Moka reacted slowly, licking the blood from her lips and her teeth as she straightened up and stretched her back. His blood had an interesting taste, it was hot, but not blisteringly so, and it was sweet, but not overpowering, plus the slightly musty, smokey taste and the energizing feeling she got from it, she was quickly deciding she wanted a _lot_ more. "You need to learn your place, boy." She said slowly, eying the monster with interest.

Now that his hood had been lowered, she had no problem with admitting he had a handsome human-form face. It wasn't elongated or scrunched up, like many of the faces she'd seen in this school, if anything it looked _natural,_ the bones weren't too angular or too pronounced, the bone structure gave him a slightly innocent look about him, however the look of his face and in his eyes suggested a hardened feeling about him, something told the Vampire that this man had seen and drawn blood before. However, battle-born as she was, she already found one major flaw in the man's appearance: His hair. Long as it was, she could very easily grab it and use it against him, and while the same could be said for her, no one had ever gotten close enough to grab her hair, and the one who had was now dead.

"Learn _my_ place?" Asked the monster, his deep blue eyes conveying several emotions at once, chief among them being shock. "I just saved your ass, lady, _you_ need to learn not to _eat_ people who were only trying to help!" She thought she heard a light chuckle at the end of his sentence, but her focus was on his hand, which was covering the puncture marks on his neck. This sight brought back memories of his delicious blood, which fogged up a majority of her brain.

"I wasn't trying to _eat_ you, boy, I'm a vampire, I was just drinking your blood." She said, simply, brushing some of her fine silver hair behind her ear.

"Oh! Good! Thanks for the fucking warning, lady!" The monster retorted, removing his hand and looking stunned when it wasn't covered in blood. He replaced the hand on his neck, just in case, "what, am I going to turn into your vampire slave in twenty four hours now, or something?" He demanded, "I read Dracula, lady, I know how a lot of this stuff works."

That caught the Vampire's attention, what was this boy _Human_ or something? Any monster with a half-witted education knew that at least half of the rumors surrounding monsters in Human education were unfounded. Wooden stakes and Vampires, however? Those rumors were true, and with the way he left his statement hanging, she felt the threat more than she sensed it. Combined with the miniature assault, she was beginning to debate whether or not he and his blood were worth the trouble. "You don't turn in to one of us if you have your blood drunk, _we_ have to give _you_ blood to do that."

Finally removing his hand from his neck, the monster retorted quickly, "well that's a relief. But it doesn't remove the fact that you tried to _eat_ me just a few minutes after I _saved_ your ass."

The proud, Vampiric part of her wanted to retort and say she wouldn't have needed saving, but then the reasonable part of her mentioned how her outer self was far less 'confrontational' than she, and if this man hadn't interfered, she would have lost a lot more than her clothes. Speaking of which, she looked down and now noticed how much of her upper front was exposed, though thankfully her mammaries were still covered, so in the end, it didn't matter too much.

Biting her lip, she conceded. "I admit I acted... Rashly..." She said, slowly, "but, as I said... You smelled - and _still_ smell - intoxicating... Almost like a Human." She noticed he blinked when she said that, and swallowed as well, but he responded quickly enough.

"So, you just... Bite me without warning?"

"Much in the same way you followed your instincts and punched _me_ without warning, I drank your blood with the same amount of warning." A moment passed, "where is my Rosary?"

The Human shrugged, "I don't know, I'm feeling a little light headed due to _fucking blood loss!"_ She frowned, he made his point and she didn't have a retort ready. What surprised her, however, was what he did a moment later, he walked over to the boy's dorm and gripped an electric lamp post with one hand, the other raised in her direction, as if in preemptive defense.

"What -" Her tongue was silenced when electricity literally was drawn from the lamp and flew onto his arm and into his skin at the junction from arm to shoulder. He drained the lamp post as effectively as she drained blood, and when the light bulb went dark, he let go, looking far less pale or fatigued than he did just a few moments ago.

"Alright." Said the man, "if we're going to keep going, let me know now, otherwise, can you _please_ put something on? That's kind of distracting." He pointed at her exposed front.

Moka blinked, she had expected him to attack again, did this monster just choose peace over war? How seriously was he taking the 'Human form' thing? "I... What?" She finally forced out of a brain in overdrive.

"Hell lady, I'll give you my jacket - _temporarily - _if it means I don't have to resist staring at you any more." Said the boy, before he looked around the surrounding area, as if he only just now noticed the two were alone.

Moka stared at him, blood red eyes twinkling with interest. "In your own words, I just tried to eat you... And you would give me your jacket so as to cover my modesty?" Though 'modest' might have been the wrong word, because she was making no attempt to cover any part of herself.

"Nope. That's only if you don't want to keep fighting." The monster said simply, "if you want to keep fighting, I've got something I've been wanting to try out for a damn long while now." Electricity began cackling up one arm while smoke enveloped the other, "your choice." He said slowly.

The Vampire stared at the other monster for a moment. Part of her was still tired, still waking up, and thus she didn't want to fight a monster whose power she didn't yet fully understand. For all she knew, this monster was an S-Class, like herself, and if she fought him he would bring forth something _far_ more deadly than smoke and lightning, but the possibility also existed that the materials covering his arms were the complete extent of his abilities. Then, the other side of her wanted to teach this monster his place. He _had_ assaulted her, after all, and whatever strength he lacked physically had certainly been made up by the searing smoke and the burning electricity. If she let him off this time, it could be seen as a form of weakness, and he may decide to abuse her as Saizo had done. Plus, if she beat him to a bloody pulp, there would be no way he could refuse to give her more of his delicious blood.

She stared into his unobstructed, dark blue eyes. They seemed to portray something other than a will to fight, she thought she could see something... _Else_ in them. It reminded her of herself, actually, as if there was another presence within the _man_ in front of her, and unlike the monster's will to fight if the need arose, whatever she saw within him had a desire not just to fight, but to destroy. Worse, she thought this presence had the power to do so.

_If I want to fight him... I'll have to know what is inside him, first._ So with those thoughts, she extended her hand, while the other rested on her hip.

The monster stared at her expectantly, "you looking for a coat or for a fist?"

"I'm looking for the Rosary in your pocket." Her words, surprisingly, drew no reaction from the monster in front of her. Instead, he reached into his pocket and drew the ornate artifact. He tossed it to her, keeping the distance between the two and not closing it. Moka caught the Rosary deftly, but before she clicked it back onto her chain, she looked at the man once more. "What is your name?"

"My friends call me Silas." Said the man.

Moka gave the man another look, before she shrugged. "I think I like your real name better." She clicked the rosary onto its chain.

* * *

John VaSilas stared at the now unconscious, pink-haired Vampire, crumpled up onto the ground. She fell out just a second after the rosary had clicked back onto her chain, and now she was out cold, leaving Silas with a dead body, a half naked girl, and her psychotic 'other personality', that could probably kill him without a second thought. Still staring at the unconscious Moka, several things ran through Silas' mind. Among the most prevalent was his slight amusement at how he'd just had a small-scale battle, and yet no one had come to even check in. Even in Empire, if Silas had started blasting things with lightning, someone would have come to look at what was going on. Was violence so commonplace here that no one cared?

And _there_ was the damn feeling like he was being watched again. Annoyed, Silas slowly turned his head to the woods to his left. He could see a line of bushes lining the forest's perimeter, and after staring at the bushes for several seconds, noticed one twitch. That was all the indication the Conduit needed, and with no warning or indication of what he was gong to do, he blasted the bush with a large smoke blast. What came afterwards almost surprised the Conduit, _almost._ Ice flew straight out from the bush as a figure strolled out. Three bolts of electricity zapped the ice knives out of the air with loud sizzles for each knife. Silas found himself staring at the purple haired girl he'd met at the orientation, though for the life of him he couldn't remember her name.

The two stared at each other, Silas' smoke-covered hand extended while her ice-made arm was similarly raised. "Why have you been following me?" Silas asked.

"I had nothing better to do." The girl said, through the lollipop in her mouth. "Why were you talking to Kuyou?"

"I just saw the guy light seven people on fire... Would _you_ have ignored him?" Silas retorted.

The girl seemed to agree with him, but she looked at Moka. "What do you plan on doing with her?" She asked, arm still raised.

Silas looked at Moka too, the ice-wielder raised a good point: What _was_ he going to do with her? It wasn't like he had a key to Moka's dorm, so he couldn't drop her off there, and he was pretty certain she wouldn't want to wake up in _his_ room... So what _was_ he going to do with her?

He shrugged, "I haven't gotten that far, yet." He looked at the girl, "I'm afraid I've forgotten your name, already... But if you put down your arm, I'll put down mine."

The girl looked at Silas for a moment, before she did so. "It's Mizore." She repeated, "you have pretty eyes... You should consider keeping your hood off."

Silas chuckled, before he drew the hood, feeling comfortable when he felt the fabric cover his head and reveling in the absence of solar heat from his face. "I doubt that'll happen." He said, "so..." He looked at Moka, "any ideas?"

"She lives in room five twelve." Mizore said, bluntly.

Silas stared at the purple haired woman, "how the hell do _you_ know that?"

He saw the pale skinned woman grin, lightly. "You're not the only one I stalk."

"Right..." Said a thoroughly weirded out Conduit, "would you happen to know where she keeps the spare key?"

She nodded, "we won't need it, though." She raised her hand, and the air above her palm froze into the universal image of a key.

Silas shrugged, "I'll take it." He said, walking over to Moka. Before he picked her up, he gave her a light poke on the arm, and when the blood-covered vampire didn't stir, he picked her up bridal-style. "You're a girl, so let me in?" He nodded to the girl's dorm. Mizore nodded silently, and the two entered the girl's dorm. They caught a few eyes from the late-risers, and Silas heard some lowered voices, but he ignored it. Mizore led him to Moka's room, and after a few seconds, during which she made a half dozen ice-keys, each one different than the last, to try and fit Moka's lock, it finally opened with a 'click', and the door swung open unceremoniously.

Silas wasn't surprised Moka's room was as bare as his. He wondered how much time she actually spent in here, given the fact that Saizo was always dragging her everywhere.

He chuckled, as he laid her down on her futon. _Won't be happening any more._ He thought with a grim grin.

"Are you staring at her breasts?" Mizore asked bluntly, after Silas let Moka down.

Silas, in turn, stared at Mizore, who wore an unassuming, slightly disinterested look on her face. His eyebrow raised, Silas responded with, "were _you?" _As the two exited the Vampire's room.

"Yes." The ice-woman responded, bluntly. "It's hard not to, even if you're a girl."

The bluntness of the response was what got Silas laughing. Even Mizore smiled a bit, as they went back down the stairwell and through the girl's dorm entrance. The two walked silently for a few minutes, before Silas decided to break the silence. "So what are you planning on doing with your free day?"

"Stalk a few cute boys, see if I can find a lover." Mizore said bluntly.

"Oh good." Silas nodded, playing it off as if he'd heard that three times a day.

"You?"

"Me what?" _I sincerely hope she's asking what I'm **doing...** _Thought the Conduit.

"What do you plan on doing?"

Silas shrugged, "I dunno, I think I'll stop by my homeroom teacher's office and grab the club listings... See if there's anything out there that might be worth looking in to."

Mizore looked thoughtful for a moment, "I'm thinking about joining the newspaper club."

"Oh? Why's that?" Silas asked.

"I've always wanted to be an investigative reporter." Said Mizore with a small smile.

_I think I can see why..._ Thought Silas, as his mind went to the fact that she seemed to always be hiding in plain sight. "I don't know if that's a good idea, Mizore." He said, however. "I heard that the Newspaper's got a pretty tense relationship with the Public Safety Commission."

Mizore shrugged, "I don't care." She said, "they won't do anything as long as I don't." She paused, "and if they decide to follow me, I'll know... They're not the stealthiest bunch."

* * *

High above the Snow-Maiden and the hooded Monster, Kuyou Tanzin watched the two with interest. Standing on the roof top of one of the school buildings, the head of the Public Safety Commission had seen VaSilas' battle with the Monstrel, as short as it may have been. To say the fire-wielder was interested in the skills the monster had displayed, would be akin to saying a child was only just interested in a candy bar. The fire-wielder had been more or less amazed at the skill the monster had shown, but what had intrigued him was the fact that John VaSilas' record was so... _Empty,_ in a word.

It was almost as if -

"So what do you think of him?" Asked a womanly voice, as she came to a stop right next to the fire wielder.

Only one person in this school could so successfully sneak up on the fire wielder, so he didn't even turn to look at the spider-woman when she greeted him. "He is interesting, Keito, I shall give him that." He said, watching as the monster and the snow-maiden made idle chat, slowly getting farther and farther from the two Enforcers' watchful eyes. "But what interests me the most about him is not his abilities... But rather, what they and the gaps in his record suggest."

Keito looked at Kuyou, interestedly. "What do you mean?"

"I have two working theories as to his species, each is as horrifying as the next." Said Kuyou, "but... Either way, he is, at the very least... Smart... _Very_ smart." He looked over at the Monstrel's corpse, which was being cleaned up by the rapidly intervening custodial crew. "He _had_ the Monstrel, but instead of showing potentially the entire school the extent of his abilities, he instead chose to learn the abilities of those who could be a threat to him, by forcing the Vampire to reveal herself... And when she threatened to turn on him, he beat her into a mind-state that could be more easily talked down." Kuyou explained, his mind and his mouth running on two separate trains of thought.

Keito looked at the fire-wielder, his eyes were clouded, he was deep in thought in spite of the fact that he carried on a conversation with her. She waited a moment, before finally speaking, "what do you suggest we do?"

"I want him watched." Kuyou finally settled on. "If either one of my theories proves correct, VaSilas will prove to be an irreplaceable asset."

Keito nodded, not questioning her leader's reasons. "Who should watch him? Sallen?" She asked.

Kuyou frowned, and shook his head. "No, Sallen is subtle, but if either of my theories are correct, even he is not subtle enough to trick VaSilas." He thought deeply for several moments, and finally asked, "Is Chol available?"

Keito blinked, of anything, she hadn't expected _that. _"Err... She can be, but if we place her on VaSilas, she will lose all of her work on Anti -"

"Do it." Said Kuyou, spinning on the heel and leaving the rooftop. "I am certain that this will be worth it."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 4

* * *

_"How must it feel like to be a king? To be going about your day to day life, as the player manipulates all the pieces around you, to only ever come across an enemy piece temporarily before you are violently yanked away from danger, or a friend places themself in front of the enemy piece's path, or circumstance pulls you away from danger ever so temporarily. A King has all the power, and yet, none, everything revolves around the king: he can start the game, but his weakness will end it. How must it feel like to be a king? It feels like being a pawn." ~Anonymous_

* * *

The Breakfast room this morning was its usual, dull roar. John VaSilas sat in his usual spot, though this time he had headphones in his ears, 'The Rize of the Fenix' by Tenacious D playing loudly in his ears. He had decided that music was a good problem solver today because nearly anywhere he looked and everywhere he listened, he would be hard pressed to find someone _not_ talking about Saizo Komiya. As Silas had thought, there were _no witnesses_ to Moka's brutal murder of the brute, and thus when his body had simply been _found,_ outside of the girl's dorm, rumors started flying about his death. Some had thought Moka had finally snapped, and helping those rumors was the fact that she hadn't left her room the entire day, Sunday. Silas had heard a few murmurings of his own name, but at that point he had started playing his music, so he didn't know if people were accusing him or if they were simply talking about him and his hood.

"Excuse me."

Silas had spent the rest of is Sunday wandering the school grounds. He had, at one point, picked up the club listings and had in turn been given a convincing argument for joining the Newspaper Club, but in the end he was still undecided. The rest of his day had been spent wandering the forests surrounding the academy; Silas knew that if he wanted to last at this school, his powers would need to evolve, become more flexible, more powerful, and though he knew his 'other' power would be an instant fix for this problem, he didn't trust it or his control of it in the slightest. To that end, Silas had hunted for a quiet, secluded place at which he could exercise his powers. He had found it after a few hours, but by that point it was nearly dinner time, and he had already missed lunch, so he marked the place with a large, ashen 'X' and smoked back to the cafeteria.

"Excuse me?"

He had, at one point, encountered Kuyou, though nothing had come out of the encounter, they had simply exchanged pleasantries and had gone their separate ways. Silas absently looked up, to see a student standing in front of him, breakfast tray held in her hands. The girl wasn't as tall as Silas, if he had to guess, he probably had a few good inches on her. She was lean, but not overly muscular, and she had tan skin, of a similar shade to Silas', but what caught his attention wasn't any of those details, nor did her more 'modest' parts immediately attract his eye, no he found himself staring first and foremost at her fiery red hair and dark orange eyes. In comparison to her dull uniform and more or less 'normal' appearance, her hair and her eyes made her stand out immediately. Silas stared at her, as she stared expectantly at him, a kind smile on her face. Silas blinked, before he realized she must have said something to him, he yanked the earbuds out of his head and acknowledged her presence.

"Is it alright if I sit here?" Asked the fiery red head.

"Err... Yeah, go ahead." Said Silas, wrapping up his ear buds and shoving them into his pocket. The girl thanked him and sat down, Silas couldn't help but stare at the food adoring her plate, subtlety must not be this girl's strong suit, because she was literally eating burnt _everything._ Burnt toast, burnt waffles, burnt eggs, the only thing she was consuming that wasn't overcooked was the milk in her carton. Silas looked up at her hair, and in a few moments came to the conclusion that she must be someone like Kuyou, or at least similar, in the sense that she could control fire.

_Kuyou was more subtle, I think... If I hadn't seen him set folks on fire I might've thought he was an Ice Guy, like Mizore. _Silas thought, "so what's your name?"

She looked up, mouth filled with burnt eggs. She said something unintelligible, before she swallowed deeply and said, "sorry... It's Chol." She smiled, "Chol Nix."

_Least it isn't another Japanese name... But what the hell kind of society names their kid 'Chol'?_ Thought Silas, before he extended a gloved hand. "John VaSilas." He said, "my friends just call me Silas."

"Oh! Like the guy from the bible?" The red head asked innocently, as she accepted and shook Silas' hand, with a surprisingly delicate grip.

"Err... No." Silas said, not knowing who she was talking about. "Just... Silas."

"Oh... Okay!" She smiled, her voice, while light in tone, was still womanly, Silas thought he could detect _age_ in her voice, like the same aged sound that came from older women who retained their powerful, youthful voices. "So, are you new here?" She asked.

Silas shrugged, "I guess I am."

"Oh, well I'm a sophomore, if you ever need any help I'll always be there!" She said cheerfully, Silas could already feel her cheerful tone grating on his nerves. "So..." She looked around conspiratorially, before she leaned in close, "what kind of monster are you?"

"Isn't that against school rules?" Silas asked, though he couldn't help but feel some of her conspiratorial nature begin to pass onto him as he grinned.

"Well, _yeah."_ She said, "but... Come on, Silas, we're _all_ monsters here!" She smiled, "so come on! A lot of people saw you shoot Saizo with smoke the other day, do you _know_ how many rumors are flying around?" She asked.

_More than you can know._ "No."

"Well, I heard some upper classman have started a _betting pool,_ if you can believe it!" She chuckled, causing a slight grin to stretch further across Silas' face, as he picked at his food. "So come on, what kind of monster are you?"

Silas eventually settled for a shrug, "I'm... certainly not anything you've ever heard of." He said, cryptically, after he finished his breakfast.

Chol stared at Silas a moment, her orange eyes twinkling as if she'd just been issued a challenge. "Oh, Silas, you know I'm going to have to find out eventually what kind of monster you are." She said, grinning.

In response, Silas shrugged. "I'm not going to make it easy on you." He said, the slightly morbid side of his mind envisioning what the look on her face would be like if she saw him turn into The Beast.

Chol looked like she was about to speak again, but the bell rang before she could. Silas noticed the slightly annoyed look in her eyes, but she quashed the look quickly enough. "Say, Silas, you wouldn't happen to know where 3-2 is, would you?" She asked.

Silas gave Chol a look as he threw away his food. "That's a freshman class." He stated. "Right?"

"Well, I don't know what Human schools you used to go to, but the classes here are intermixed... Look around, you might notice a few seniors in some of your classes." Chol said, "so, you _do_ know?" She asked with a smile.

"Yeah, it's my homeroom... I'll walk you there?" He offered, to her gleeful nod.

* * *

Later in class, Silas sat down in his usual corner in the back of the room while Nekonome introduced Chol. The greetings went by quickly, and Chol gave Silas a quick backwards glance and a wave after she took up the seat that used to be possessed by the late Saizo Komiya. Rumors of Komiya's death were thickest in 3-2, a few had asked Silas about it, but he played dumb and told them he didn't know anything about it. As class went on, the talk of rumors died down, but when group work started up and Chol decided to work with Silas, she couldn't help but pester him for everything he knew.

Finally putting down his pen, Silas conceded. "Alright, all I know is that Saizo was a huge prick." He said, bluntly. "He dragged around this poor girl, Moka's her name, and beat her silly every other day. The way I see it? Someone must have caught on and decided to beat the guy, but one or the both of them went a little too far and he died."

_"I_ heard that crystalized Ice had been found near Saizo's body." Said Chol, absently, as she filled in a history question. "Maybe whoever killed him was a snow person?" She suggested.

Silas shook his head, making a mental note that Mizore _owed_ him one. "Ice wounds wouldn't be consistent with the types of injuries Saizo sustained. More likely he fought an Orc and lost."

"I thought Saizo _was_ an Orc..." Said Chol, before she grinned evilly, "what did you say you were, again?"

Silas grinned, "I _didn't_ you sneaky bastard." He chuckled, before he pushed his paper over to the red head. "There's the answers, I've already checked 'em." He said.

"Thanks." Said Chol, grabbing Silas' paper and copying down his answers. "So, do you think they'll find who killed him?" She asked, after a few minutes.

"Doubt it, how many kids have died the last week? I think about a half dozen... No one seems to care, here... Whereas I fry _one_ guy in a Human school and suddenly the police are everywhere."

Chol looked up, surprised. "You've killed Humans before?" She asked.

_Humans, Conduits, trash-monsters, animals, you name it, I've probably killed it at this point._ Silas thought, nodding his head. "Not something I'm proud of."

Chol noted Silas' dark tone and dropped the topic. The rest of the class sped by after that, Silas finished most of his work before class had ended, so with another quarter of an hour left in the class, he was leaned back in his chair, half asleep, with music playing in his ears. Someone poked him on the arm, shaking him from his reverie, he shook his head and looked where he had been indicated, and at the front of the classroom stood another teacher, though he didn't recognize her. The teacher beckoned Silas to follow her, and after he adjusted his sling-bag, he did so.

"So..." Silas said, after several minutes of simply following the woman. "Who are you, again?"

"I'm the one in charge of the female dorms."

Silas blinked, "I know I've got long hair, but shouldn't the eleventh finger and the deep voice clue you in that I don't really fall under that category?" He asked, unable to figure out why she was looking for him, a guy, for an issue in the female dorms.

"You are acquainted with Moka Akashiya, yes?" The woman looked at him, eyes as dark a brown as her hair, trying to bore into his mind.

"Err... Acquainted, yes." He said. "why?"

"She is refusing to leave her room unless it is in your company." The woman said.

"Err... Did she mention we barely know each other?" Asked a confused Conduit.

"Nope." Said the coordinator, simply, and with a tone that said the conversation was over.

* * *

After a trip lasting several minutes, Silas and the teacher stopped in what appeared to be an abandoned gym. Silas, who'd had alarm bells ringing in his head ever since they had left he school building, stared at the coordinator in front of him.

"This isn't the Female Dorm." He said simply, "you're not a coordinator... This is a trap." He wasn't too entirely surprised someone had led him into a trap, but the only piece of information he wanted was the why.

"Have you ever heard of Anti-Thesis, John VaSilas?" The woman asked.

"Sounds like a gang."l

"That sounds like a Human term." Said the woman, though her voice suddenly dropped to that of a male. Her body began to shift, as bubbles formed on her skin, almost like incredibly hot clay. "But you could describe us as such... I assume." Said the non-teacher, as 'her' body shifted into what Silas could only describe as a cross between clay-face and the shit demon from Dogma. "But... Being a member of Anti-Thesis means you're part of a family... And this family watches after our own..." The mud-like monster turned around slowly, regarding the Conduit with cautionary anger. "You and the Vampire, Moka Akashiya, _killed_ one of our own.. Do you know what this means?"

"That Saizo really did have a gaggle of guys blasting him in the face?" Silas asked, blinking, seemingly nonplussed at the disgusting sight in front of him.

"That we've already gotten half of our vengeance." The lights in the gym switched on, showing Moka, beaten and bloodied, chained up, hanging unconscious from a crucifix made from scrap metal, chained to the wall. Silas felt chills go down his spine as he recognized the similarities between this scene and the scenes in the Warren, before MacGrath had come in, turned on the power and kicked the Dust Men's asses.

Silas felt his heart slow down as he got a good look at Moka, who was barely even breathing. He inhaled deeply, and exhaled just as deep, he could feel the 'other' power within him, whispering sweet nothings into his ear, with promises of power and vengeance.

He turned to look at the mud man, "you sure you want to do this?" Asked Silas, smoke and electricity making their way down his arms; before, each arm had a different element wrapped around it, but here he knew he would have to pull out all the stops, so wrapped around each arm looked like his own personal lightning storm, with the cyclonic smoke swirling over his arms and the electricity cackling underneath them, lighting them up blue from within. "Because if you don't bring her down... _Right now..._ You'll figure out why they call Conduits 'Bio-Terrorists'." He said, menacingly.

The rest of the lights came on, and suddenly Silas was surrounded by dozens of grotesque monster hybrids. Silas' face kept its impassive scowl, though inwardly he was wondering just how he could pull this off. He couldn't properly describe what he was seeing, half of the monsters around him looked like an amalgam of eight different species, he saw some monsters that were making weapons out of their bones, out of their very _skin,_ and some that looked like two different species had mixed together: Lizards and wolves, Hawks and bears.

_Lions and Tigers and Bears... Oh my._ Thought Silas, as he slowly looked around. _I'll need a weapon... Something that I can channel both of them with._ But he was in a decrepit, abandoned _gym._ What kind of weapon could he possibly find? Paint chips?

"I'll give you one chance... John VaSilas." Said the mud monster, drawing Silas' gaze to him. "Surrender... Or die."

Silas stared at the man, before he looked up. The entire ceiling was lined with chains, but what interested the Conduit was what the ceiling was made out of. They had stripped away anything of value without risking the ceiling itself, and thus, he could see it was made out of some sort of flimsy, rustic metal. _One_ good missile bolt would crack a hole in the ceiling, through which Silas could very easily attempt an Orbital Drop.

Silas lowered his head and stared at the Mud Demon directly in the eye. "Is that _your_ answer?" He asked, removing his coat - but not the bag or his gloves - as he did so.

The mud-monster stared at the now hoodless Conduit. "Get him." The grotesque being ordered, calmly, just after Silas tossed his coat to the side.

Silas acted instantly. His electricity covered left hand launched a missile bolt upwards as he crouched downwards, smoke coalescing and spinning around his feet as he prepared his jump. The missile bolt exploded and tore the ceiling apart, and just as the first grotesque half-breed came within striking distance, Silas leaped upwards. Transforming into smoke, he dashed vertically into the air, several dozen feet later he reformed into a Human being, three lightning bolts surged from the rapidly gathering clouds and slammed into the electro/pyro kinetic Conduit, super charging his attack as he rocketed towards the ground, aided by his his static thrusters. Silas slammed into the ground with a massive thunder clap, smoke and electricity shockwaving outwards, sending those closest to him flying, covered in a thick veil of jet black, electrified smoke.

Silas had been given no reprieve, though, one of the bird/hawk monsters hurtled towards him. Silas narrowly dodged its beak and slammed his electrified, super-heated fist into the base of her neck, knocking her out cold as she slid across the concrete floor. Another crossbreed came hurtling towards him, this one some kind of hulking ogre. Silas sent a cinder blast at its face, stunning it long enough for the Conduit to run forward, leap into the air and place an electrified side-kick on its jaw. The blow didn't knock out the hulking creature, but it kept it stunned while Silas dealt with the rest of the horde.

One of the skin-monsters tried to carve Silas open with his claws. Silas wasn't fast enough to counter this monster's speed, and felt the claws cut open his arm; Silas gave the monster a taste of its own medicine, however, when he blasted him in the face with a several thousand volt, smoke-assisted superman punch. The monster stumbled back a few steps, but this time the Brute from before returned. The brute's face was bleeding and burnt, and Silas saw it coming just too late, the Brute's fist slammed into his gut and sent him flying into the air. Silas slammed into the wall, one of his arms getting caught in a chain while his body was depressed into the stone wall.

Silas groaned in pain, but when he looked up he saw a lighting fixture, just close enough for him to utilize. He wrenched his free hand out of the wall and stole the fixture's electricity, feeling the cuts on his arm heal and his cracked ribs knit. With his wounds healed, Silas looked to his caught arm, and noticed that the chain was conducting electricity. In a visage similar to how his arms would be cloaked with electricity, the chain he held on to was as well. A second glance showed Silas that its far end was glowing red hot, showing him it was channeling his smoke as well.

_Fuck it._ Thought Silas, ripping the chain out from the flimsy ceiling, its weighted end swinging freely. _It's better than no weapon at all. _Silas wrenched himself from the wall and thunder-dropped to the ground, sending monsters flying.

Breathing heavily, Silas swung the weighted end of the chain circularly, grinning as he could almost _feel_ his body almost adapting and accepting it as a channel - or, perhaps the better word was 'conduit' - for his abilities. Silas swung the chain once more, and its inertia wrapped itself around his bare arm.

"Ready for round two?" Silas taunted, smoke coming from his mouth as he spoke.

The Monsters roared their respective battle cries, and stormed the conduit, who swung the several dozen pound chain as easily as a rope, channeling his powers through it and slamming the weighted end into his enemies. Each impact with the weighted end resulted in an electric 'crack' or a superheated smokey explosion, but the results were the same: Silas had a weapon, and was fighting with it. Two monsters tried to swarm him, but Silas wrapped the end of his chain around the neck of one, using the monster's forward momentum and the chain's horizontal momentum to spin the _monster_ around and slam it into his buddy, forcing them both to hit the ground, unconscious.

Now the monsters were trying to rush him at the same time, Silas wanted space, so with a deep scowl he started swinging his chain, his fist the axle upon which it spun. A discus of smoke surrounded the Conduit as the chain picked up speed, quickly a aura of smoke surrounded him, a several foot gap existed between the Conduit and the monsters. One tried to breech this gap, the weighted end of the chain slammed into its skull with a loud crack, Silas did the first thing he could think of that might work. With the chain on one end, he yanked it the opposite way, and its previous horizontal inertia was converted to forward momentum, and the weighted end slammed into the chest of the monster in its way, sending him flying to the ground with a loud, large explosion of smoke. Not wasting time, Silas swung his arm upwards, and the chain curved up and over the conduit before slamming into another monster, Silas ripped the chain back and grabbed the weighted end and, with the furled up chain, wrapped it around the neck next monster to rush him. He held it tight against the monster's throat, suffocating him, the look in his eyes and the smoke billowing from his mouth finally convinced the monsters that it wasn't a good idea, _at all,_ to rush him.

When the monster finally fell out, unconscious, Silas ripped the chain off of his neck and wrapped it around his arm, slowly the monsters were backing up, trying to come up with a new strategy. He was breathing heavily, his eyes were wide, he was trying to see who would attack next, when, without warning, the ground started shaking. All of the monsters, and the Conduit, looked to the center of the gymnasium, where the Mud Monster had increased in size, now nearly as tall as the ceiling. Silas stared at the monster, unimpressed, as it raised its arm. Spikes grew out of the arm, but still Silas stood there. The Monster made to shoot the muddy spikes out of the arm, as Silas raised his own electricity cloaked arms skyward.

_I've been meaning to try this out for a long time... Now._ Thought the Conduit, _too bad it wasn't on the Vampire._ He brought is arms down and lightning, pure and raw, cascaded down from the sky and slammed into the mud monster. The raw amount of energy created by Silas' attack blew the power in many of the electric items in the decrepit gymnasium, and the mud monster screamed loudly, trying in vain to protect itself, but its size only served to hinder it as its massive, goopy arms slammed into the ceiling, in an attempt to cover its head. The lightning kept up, even as the monster tore through the ceiling in an attempt to cover itself, but all it managed to do was cover its viscous, superheated arms in electricity-conducting metal, making it, essentially, an enormous lightning rod.

Silas kept up the attack for as long as he could, before he dropped it. He was tapped, and he knew it, but the monsters around him had no idea, all they knew was that he had just called forth energy from the heavens to destroy what was most likely their biggest, baddest monster.

Breathing deeply, the Conduit spoke with a deep voice, "Who's... _Next?"_ He gasped, feeling the beast's energy attempting to seduce him, he knew his eyes had turned blood red, and he knew that, because he'd just taken out the power with this attack, he might have to give in if they pressed the attack.

The air grew thick, as neither side knew what the other side was planning.

* * *

_"So how must it feel like to be a Pawn?"_ _~Anonymous_


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 5

* * *

The Monsters looked from Silas, to the smoldering, cracking mud monster, back to Silas, and back to the impromptu lightning rod. Silas slowly reached into his bag with his unarmed hand, his fist clenched around a battery and he sucked it dry in seconds, before he threw it to the ground with a clatter that only seemed as deafening as it was because of the silence in the room. The Battery hadn't filled him up completely, but he could fight again, and the Monsters around him suddenly seemed to synchronize thoughts as they all realized it.

_One_ stepped forward, but before it could attack, its jaw was broken by the weighted end of Silas' electrified, super-heated chain, and it was knocked out cold. This was enough for the other monsters, who fled as fast as they could. Silas stayed like this, exhausted through energy expenditure, but still feeling the adrenaline pumping and his heart thudding in his ears. Two minutes passed by and no one came back, another minute passed and no one Silas had knocked out tried getting back up.

Silas, still breathing heavily, stood back up in a neutral stance. "I... Guess... I win." He breathed, walking slowly, stiffly towards the center of the room. Silas yanked up his coat and slipped it on under his sling-bag, before he drew his hood and searched for Moka.

It took him a moment, but when the power switched back on, he found her instantly, still out cold, still hanging from the ceiling. It took Silas only a moment to smoke-dash to the girders in the ceiling, but he found himself challenged by the chains, he had no idea how to get Moka out of them. Silas fiddled with the chains on her left arm for several minutes, before he found a weak, rusty link. He blasted said link with a smoke blast, and the chains slowly fell off of Moka's arm. Silas dashed to her other side and did the same thing, managing to catch her arm before she plummeted down to the ground. With a little maneuvering, Silas hit his static thrusters and slowly floated down to the ground, Moka piggy-backing on the ride.

Now back on Terra Firma, Silas checked Moka's injuries. It had seemed far worse when he'd seen her from a distance, most of the damage was superficial, the bruises, numerous as they may be, would clear up in a few days, and the cuts would most likely be gone by week's end, perhaps sooner, given the differences between Human and Vampire biology. Silas debated on whether or not he should heal her with his abilities, but decided against it, either one of his healing abilities always produced scars on his body, and he doubted she would want those when the alternative could possibly avoid them.

_Well... I am not dragging her ass all the way back to the school._ Thought Silas, as he rocked back and forth on his crouched feet. _So... I might as well make myself comfortable. _Thought the Conduit as he stood up. _But... First things first..._ He thought, searching for a suitable room. _I've got to hide these guys..._

* * *

_The tension in the air could be severed with a knife, or a liberal usage of ammunition. The teenager slowly, lonely, walked through the desolate streets of Empire City, keeping his hooded head down and avoiding contact with anyone he didn't recognize, which, essentially, was everyone. The sky was gray and the streets were pitch black, the power had gone out weeks ago and no one had the know-how - or a pair big enough - to try and bring it back online, not with the Warren's formerly homeless militia, the Dustmen, protecting the substations. _

_The Teen's apartment complex had long since burned to the ground, so now he slept on the streets, along with half of the city. He could never remember being so scared for his life, wondering each night as he cowered beneath garbage bags and tin foil, whether or not the thugs would decide to shoot him or try and make him one of their own. In all honesty, the teenager had no idea which was worse, if they shot him, he was dead, but if they took him, he was one of _them_, a thug, a vagrant. _

_Unfortunately for the teen, the dangers of the day outweighed those of the night. He collided with a tall, dark skinned burly man, who stared down at the teen, an enraged look in his eyes, the heat of his rage seeming to actually radiate off of him, almost setting him ablaze. _

_"Watch..." The man reached down and grabbed the teen, "where..." He reared his fist back, "you're fuckin' GOING!" His fist flew forward.  
_

_In a fit of panic, the teenager reached up and grabbed the man's fist, trying to block the blow. What happened next, neither could have seen coming. What looked like pitch black _tendrils_ shot out of the Teen's arms and wrapped around the man's fist. The man was now shouting in pain as it felt like the essence of his soul was being sucked out of him, while the wide-eyed teen had a converse feeling, like sucking a thick milkshake through a thin straw. _

_Worse for the teen, was what he **saw** while this was happening. He saw this man's memories, he saw what he did every day to survive, the excessive violence, death, and killing of innocent people. The teenager saw the man use each of his powers, he felt the memories of **exactly** how the man used the powers, and how he could use them himself. He saw the man blast people into pieces with rockets, suffocate people with the burning smoke, stun them with sulfur as he broke into their homes and stole their food.  
_

_He saw the children the man killed by forcing the smoke into their lungs, he saw the look in this one girl's eyes as she knew death was at hand. The pleading look of one so innocent that the thought of killing another living thing hadn't ever even entered her mind, while it was all the man could think about as he stole everything out from under the orphaned child. _

_The man was evil, but the teenager saw what his powers allowed him to do. What they could allow _him_ to do, because as he saw this man's memories, he felt his powers split apart, like asexual reproductive organisms, and slide into himself wholesale. The two were forced apart by a smoke-filled blast, the inexperienced teenager being enveloped in the smoke while the enormous man stared at him with unbridled rage. _

_"I don't know what the **fuck** you just did..." The man lifted his hand and smoke gathered in his outstretched palm, "but I'm gonna **un**do it!" He blasted the teenager in the chest. "Silas!" The man roared out in anger, as the teenager's feet turned to lead. "Silas!" The teenager fell to the ground, screaming as the burning hot smoke seared his chest._ "Silas!"_  
_

* * *

John VaSilas woke up with a start, a cold sweat clinging to his body. With a yelp he gathered electricity in his hand and made to punch whoever it was standing above him, but he halted his fist when he found, to his surprise, a waking Moka Akashiya, who recoiled in fright at the sight of the Conduit's power. Silas cut the flow of electricity, noticing now that he was breathing heavily, and his heart was pounding.

He placed his hand against his aching forehead, "ugh... Sorry." He said breathily, before something clicked for him, and he looked at the vampire. "I see you're awake... I must've dozed off." He looked to the hole in the ceiling and saw that the moon was high in the sky, "or... Fell asleep."

"Are you alright?" Moka asked, her friendly voice in stark contrast to the commanding tone her vampiric self took.

"Eh, I'm fine." Silas waved away the question, "how 'bout _you?"_ He asked, resting his hand on his knee, and his head on the wall, while keeping eye contact with the Vampire. "How long did they keep you here?"

Moka rubbed her arm nervously, "I... Was woken up Sunday night by a pounding on my door... Next thing I knew I was here." She said, shivering at the memory, before she looked at Silas, curiously. "Did you save me?"

Silas nodded.

"And... Saizo... Is what they said true? Did you... _Kill..._ Him?" She asked.

Silas debated with himself, on whether or not he should tell Moka that she'd actually been the one to kill the brute. "Yeah." He finally said, "I heard him trying to violate you, so I helped take him down." He chose his words carefully, if Moka pressed him, he'd tell her straight up that he'd 'helped' her other half, but if she didn't, he had no qualms with her thinking he'd killed the brute himself.

Moka was silent for a moment as she considered this information. "Why?" She finally asked, "I almost ran you over on the orientation day, why do you still help me?" She almost screamed, Silas stayed silent, he knew this tone of voice, this was weeks of stress exploding outwards. "I've done nothing but ignore you all year, I didn't do anything when Saizo threatened you, or tried to attack you during breakfast, I even had you pay for my _drink,_ I haven't done a thing for you so _why are you doing these things for me?!"_ She sobbed, collapsing onto her knees as she did so.

_You done?_ Thought the Conduit.

He let her cry for a few minutes before he actually spoke. "I'll be honest with you Coffee, I've no clue." He said simply, and with a shrug. He noticed with a grin that the name 'coffee' had elicited a reaction. "I'll be honest with you, both times were kind of out of circumstance. I kicked Saizo's ass from here and back because he was trying to rape you... And I've... Well..." He thought about how to word what came next, "I've long since decided I won't let that fly. And here? I was kind of tricked into coming here... Apparently Saizo was part of some gang and they got pissed when he died, so they took it out on you and me." He explained. "I'll admit, you seem like a cool gal Coffee, but don't look too deep into this, I barely know you, and you barely know me. I don't readily put my life on the line for people I don't know." He groaned as he forced his stiff body to stand up. "But, twice now I've been put into a position where your life has been placed in my hands... Now I don't know if you believe in fate, but I've more or less been forced to believe that things happen for a reason." He said, a crack of electricity running down his right arm after he said so. "So... I guess I'd be willing to _get _to know you." He said, "so long as you don't make a habit of dating abusive thugs... Fool me once, fool me twice, sort of thing." Finished the conduit, as he extended his hand. "So... Friends?" He asked, looking down as the speechless vampire.

For a moment, there was nothing, but finally the Vampire got to her feet, slowly, and shakily. She remained standing for a grand total of three seconds, as she stared at Silas' gloved hand, before she burst into tears again and embraced him, her monster strength nearly crushing him as she sobbed into his chest. Silas stood there for a moment, frozen not because he was stunned, but because he didn't know what to do. After a few seconds of her sobbing, making his school shirt wet, he simply ran his hand over her head, silently waiting for her to calm down so they could go back to the dorms.

* * *

He was breathing heavily, a soaking wet bag was tied over his head, casting his world into darkness. His entire body was sore from the fight earlier that day, he knew some of his ribs had been broken by the monster's chain, and he knew his skull had been cracked, but what scared him to death was the absolute silence in the room he found himself in. He had no idea where he was, if he was even on campus any more, some part of him was wondering if he was even alive.

He heard something, a creaking sound, like an old, rustic door opening slowly, before it clicked closed. Several seconds of silence, before another bucket of water was poured onto him, he screamed out of pain and fright, whoever was doing this knew of his weaknesses.

"So..." Said a female voice, after _another_ bucket of water had been splashed onto the hybrid. "I was led to believe that you and a lot of your half-breed friends were in a rather large fight this afternoon." She said, her voice low and womanly, calm and polite, and horrifying all at the same time.

"I -"

_"I didn't say you could speak!"_ The unseen woman slapped the hybrid with such strength that his face burned afterwards. "Now... When I ask you a question, I want you to answer. One question, one answer." She explained, "you get _one_ free lie, and I'll know when you're lying. So after that one lie, I'll make you wish you hadn't." He heard a scratching noise, of metal on stone. "Now... Who were you fighting this afternoon?"

The sensory deprivation was agony, he had no idea where this woman was, or who she was, she seemed to be everywhere at once, and yet, nowhere. He couldn't sense her presence, he couldn't hear her breathing, he couldn't do anything to identify her in the slightest.

"I... I... I..." He said, hyperventilating, "I don't... Don't..."

"Calm down." Said the woman in a suddenly kind voice, "collect your thoughts... And consider the fact that you've used your free lie already, so soon in our little interview session." He felt blistering hot hands trail their way over his shoulder and down his arm, she was trying to do it seductively, but the heat at which her skin burned nearly set his ablaze.

He screamed in pain, before forcing out, "VaSilas! John VaSilas!" He cried, losing control over his Human form and reverting to his hybrid lizard/orc form.

"Hm." She said, "tell me about the fight. What kind of monster do you think he is? What were his abilities, his weaknesses?"

"I... I don't know what monster he is!" The hybrid screamed in pain, "I think he is some kind of hybrid, _like meeee- AAAAAAUGH!"_ He screamed. "Conduit!" He screamed, "he said something about Conduits... He... He... He - Smoke! Lightning! He took down a mud titan with _lightning,_ and jumped into the air and exploded into sulfur!" He shouted out as quickly as he could, through frequent, pained sobs. "He fights... He fights... He fights like nothing I've ever seen! His smoke burns and his lightning electrocutes, stunning and burning anyone he touches! He can shoot it, too, and it hurts even more when he shoots it - _AAAAAAAUGH!" _The same blistering heat was now dragged across his chin in the same tortuously-seductive manner. "I -" He gasped, - "fights like a brute, putting everything into his punches, but he is weak, physically! His strength comes from weapons, like a _HuuuumaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAUGH!"_

She dragged her hand slowly down his chest, feeling his scales and burning them as easily as she burned his shirt off of his chest. She seemed to coo as she tortured him, seeming to draw some sort of sick, twisted pleasure from what she did.

"What of his weaknesses?" The girl asked slowly, seductively, her voice promising respite from the intense pain her hand wrought.

The man openly lost control of his bowels as he sobbed, saying anything to try and make the pain stop. "I don't know! I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! He uses... Lightning! So... Maybe he can't stand water? I don't _NOOOOOOOOOOO!"_ He felt her hand tighten around his scrotum.

"Is there anything _else -"_ She tightened her grip, the heat becoming so great some of his flesh was beginning to melt off. -" you can tell me?" She asked, kindly.

"No!" He begged, "I don't know anything else I _swear!"_ He was openly sobbing into his bag.

He cried with joy when the hand was removed, but his breath caught with fear when he recognized the next voice, this one _far_ more frightening than the seductress. Its male tone deep and filled with power, he only had a half second to understand it before his body was flash-burnt and turned into a still, lifeless collection of ash. _"Thank you... Your help is no longer needed."_ A moment after he had been flash-burnt to a crisp, the seductress' hand gingerly tapped his head, causing the surface tension of the ash to break and it all began cascading to the ground in a morbidly beautiful display.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 6

* * *

Kurumu Kurono was exhausted. Being so beautiful was, as it turned out, a full time job, if she would give her mother anything, she would give her that. It had been two weeks now, since she had arrived in Yokai Academy, two weeks since she had seduced her first boy, two weeks since she had been able to exercise her powers in a way she couldn't have even dreamed of back home.

She yawned deeply, sitting up in bed, feeling the blanket fall off of her massive breasts, tickling her slightly as they did so. She rubbed the sleep from her deep, purple eyes, wondering what she should do today. She had already seduced most - if not, _all_ - of the useful - and, not so - boys in her class, so what should she do next? Certainly, they all gave her a sense of glee, having so many willing love-slaves, but she felt the empty feeling in her chest, as if there was a hole there, slowly widening as time went on. She didn't feel the necessary spark from any of her slaves, none of them were her 'Destined One', the one man who would be hers, now and forever.

_Perhaps..._ She thought, as she got up and stretched, not at all caring that her wings and tale - among other things - were bare for all to see. _I should expand my horizons, a bit._ She had heard from a few sources that class 1-3 had a large pool of cute guys, maybe she could look there?

With a deep inhale, Kurumu finished her stretches, and went to take her shower. Finishing that she began brushing her hair, a lengthy process but a necessary one, for one such as herself. Brushing her hair, she thought more of her slaves, sure, they were all useful, many did her homework for her, kept her grades up, and dealt with undesirables whenever she needed, and at the end of the day she felt happy to have so many people at her beck and call, but similarly, at the end of the day, she felt _bored._ Her entire time here at this school, she felt something missing, some sort of... _Something_ she couldn't properly describe, missing, t the end of the day.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, hand slowly passing through her hair as she did so.

_Maybe I'm just hungry._ She decided, _I wonder if any of my slaves know where I can find some Dorians..._ With that thought, the feeling seemed to go away, so with a smile, she finished her morning routine.

After she finished her morning routine, and got dressed in her personal favorite sweater, she left the girl's dorm. Immediately to her left was a group of her slaves, somewhere in the vicinity of three dozen mindless males, who all seemed to vocally orgasm at the mere sight of her, cheering as if she were some kind of rock star. An evil grin on her face, she beckoned her slaves to follow her as she went to breakfast. As they walked, and the dark red of the early morning sky turned brighter, she noticed, several meters in front of her, a familiar looking kid, he wore a white hoody instead of the school's jacket. The hood was drawn and, at his side were two women, both, she realized, were _from her class._ One had fiery red hair and a decent enough figure, Kurumu would have felt jealous, if the red-head's ass had been a bit larger, but as it stood, there was nothing to fear, but on the man's other side was the object of the late Komiya's eye, Moka something, she couldn't remember her entire name.

_Hm..._ She chuckled, _maybe it's 'cream'... Like coffee._ She grinned, though somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered how that boy hadn't fallen to her charm yet. Thinking on it, Kurumu couldn't remember at all him ever coming to speak to him, a sudden, shocking feeling went through her mind when she realized the two had _never_ exchanged a word to each other. _Oh..._ Her eyes squinted, _that's going to change..._

* * *

"So, not missing a _beat_, I lean over and shout out: 'Hey, honey! _Don't forget the coffee!'."_ Laughed John VaSilas, as he gesticulated the joke to the two teenage women sitting in front of him in the cafeteria.

Moka was shocked, a blush slowly blooming on her cheeks as the punchline dawned on her, whereas Chol was openly laughing. She slapped her knee, her entire body twitching as she laughed. "You _really_ said that?" She said over her laughter, "you _really, really_ said that?"

_Well, no, actually I'm on a no-fly list... As it turns out, when you can control super-heated smoke and fire-starting electricity, and are a Bio-Terrorist, you're something of a flight hazard. _Silas smiled, "well, _no..._ But you've got to tell the joke that way, otherwise it's lost." He said, suppressing some chuckles, before he went back for his toast.

A few minutes passed by in silence, Chol was the next one to break the silence. "So, Sunday they're doing the Club stuff." She said absently, picking at her burnt eggs. "You guys have any idea what you're going to do?" She gave Silas a longer look than Moka, but looked at the both of them all the same.

Silas shrugged, "MMA Club's looking interesting... And _normal,_ but I'll hold off decisions until I see the guys that'll end up populating it." He said, itching at his scalp. "How 'bout you?" He looked at Chol, eyebrow raised, "anything catching your eyes?"

"I don't know." Said Chol, "I might just _not_ join a club this year. I tried the camping club, last year, but as it turns out the drywood forests aren't really the best place for someone of my race to hang out." She said, "you'd know what that's like, right? Being a... Fire starter?"

Silas shrugged, "I guess I wouldn't, I'm not a firestarter." He looked over to Moka, who had been silent the entire time. "How 'bout you? What're you thinking about?" She asked.

"Oh... I don't know." She said, "everything looks so interesting... But I've been looking for something quiet." She said, "I was thinking I'd maybe join the newspaper club."

"Newspaper club?" Silas repeated, not missing the flash of hostility in Chol's dark eyes. "Any reason for that specifically, or did you just choose it because... Why not?" He asked.

She shrugged, "why not?" She asked, a light grin on her face.

"Well, I can respect -" A lunch tray crashed onto the table, on the right side of Silas. Moka jumped, Chol got a hostile, territorial look in her eyes, and Silas calmly looked to his right.

Sitting down next to him, flamboyantly, was the girl Silas had pegged days ago as a Succubus. Her long, light blue hair flawlessly brushed and seeming to shine with a slightly oily sheen. She stared at Silas with a wide, bright smile, greeting him exuberantly, with a long, drawn out final syllable, as if she thought it was cute.

Silas, who, even if he hadn't been under the impression that she was trying to steal his soul, didn't find the things she was doing _cute,_ had none of it. "The hell are you?" He asked, bluntly, a blank look on his face as he tried to place the Succubus'.

The Succubus tilted her head, "don't you re_member?_ She asked, wrapping her arms around Silas' right and leaning in closely. "It's _me,_ Kurumu!"

Barely suppressing an amused grin, Silas extricated his arm from her grip. "Nope, doesn't ring a bell..." He slid down one seat, one word, closely resembling 'door', running through his mind. "Can I help you?" He asked, politely, but reservedly.

"Weeeeellll... I was just wondering... What are you doing later today?" She asked, smile wide.

Silas looked over at Chol, the look in his eyes being an amused invitation to the conversation. She took the hint, though her execution was what surprised him, "oh, he's bringing me out on a walk through the forest." She said, "we've been dating for about a month now, see." She said with a suggestive smile sent towards Kurumu, Silas noticed how his heart slowed down at her words, but he ignored the feeling.

Kurumu blinked, visibly stuttering as she processed this information. "Uh... Oh." It took her a moment to recover, "well..." She looked at Silas, he noticed something indescribably _odd_ about the look in her eyes. "Wouldn't you rather walk with me?" She asked, smiling. The feeling Silas got when he looked into Kurmu's eyes was very similar to the feeling he'd gotten the times he'd drank the Neon District's black-water, it felt like he wasn't alone in his own brain, as if someone else was in his mind, seeing his memories, and cataloging them, to be used against him when the chips were down and the situation was life-or-death.

He had history with people taking things from his mind, using his _own brain_ against him in a fight, and here this girl was, trying to do the same damn thing.

It pissed him off.

It _really_ pissed him off.

Within the timespan of two seconds, John VaSilas was _visibly_ seething with anger. and Kurumu seemed to notice, because she recoiled as the scowl stretched across Silas' face, and smoke stretched across both of his arms, taking on a deep, dark red hue as it cycloned almost violently around the Conduit's upper limbs. "Just... _What..._ Do you think you're doing?" He said, slowly, deeply, and with anger in his voice.

Kurumu was slowly backing up, bringing the chair with her. "Err -"

"I _felt_ that." Silas said, his hands going to his lap, "what... Did you just try to do?!" He pushed on his lap and now he was standing, breathing heavily as the weight of what this _stupid_ girl had just tried to do, landed on him.

"I -" Fear was leaking into her eyes as she shrank into her seat, Silas' shadow stretching over her as he loomed above her.

"Did you just try..." Slowly said the Conduit, "to invade my mind?" He didn't notice the sudden, sullen silence in the lunch room, he was too angry to notice it.

"Err... Silas -" He heard Chol say, but she sounded far away, Silas' full attention was on the monster in front of him.

"Let me tell you something, Kurumu Kurono." He said slowly, the smoke's red hue casting a villainous red glow on his hooded face, casting deep shadows over the upper half of his head, giving him a nearly demonic look. "I _don't like it_ when someone tries to take what's in _my_ mind, and use it against _me."_ He said slowly, anger filling every syllable, and heat visibly _radiating _off of the smoke swirling around his arms. "So if you try that again... I swear I'll kill you." He said, his voice the epitome of seriousness. "And I don't mean I'll hurt you." He brought up an opened his palm, an orb of smoke coalescing in it, "I mean I'll fill your lungs with so much smoke the tissue inside will burn, and every breath you fail to take will hurt as if you are dying. I will cut off your air supply and make _sure_ you can't escape this; and after six minutes of pain and agony the likes of which I _know_ you have never felt before, you will die a horrible, _slow_ death." He stood there, his palm hovering a few inches from Kurmu's flawless face, and just like that, it vanished. Gone was the smoke, gone were the embers, and melted away was the blood red glow in his eyes, "do I make myself clear?" He asked, slowly.

Kurumu shook her head vigorously, a dark stain spreading across her skirt, and once cleared by the Conduit towering above her sitting form, the Succubus fled the cafeteria as fast as she could, her gaggle of guys following close behind. Silas, still breathing heavily, felt eyes on the back of his head, he whipped around and saw the ice-wielder, Mizore, standing in the open, gaping at him, lollipop hanging limply from her lip.

_"What?"_ Silas asked; a moment later he felt a hand close around his, completely ignoring the residual heat, and Chol was quickly dragging him out of the cafeteria, Moka trailing quickly behind. If he wanted to fight it he would have, but his mind was quickly going elsewhere, the memories he was reliving sapping his will to resist.

* * *

_"I swear, mothuh-fuckuh! I'll find you!"_ Roared a deep, bellowing voice.

"Silas?"

_"While you was in my mind I was in_ _yours!"_

"Silas."

"_I know where you hide, I know your friends! I'll hunt you down to the ends of the _fucking_ earth to take back what's mine!"_

_"Silas!"_

_"And I'll kill anyone who stands in my way asshole, I swear -"_

"_John_!" The Conduit was shaken from his memories, physically, by the pink haired girl standing in front of him, her arms gripping his own with a strength he didn't think she had.

Silas blinked once, twice, and suddenly noticed he wasn't in the cafeteria. "Uh... Yeah?" He said, before being released by the Vampire.

"What was that about?" Came the voice of the red-head, Chol, Silas openly recoiled at the sound of it, not having known of her presence, "first the cafeteria... Then you blanked out here? Something burning you?" She asked, head tilted with a concerned look.

"Err..." Silas knew he couldn't avoid this, but he also knew he couldn't tell the whole truth. "Kind of." He relented.

"You should sit down..." Moka suggested timidly, as she sat gestured down on a green patch of -

_Wait, what?_ Silas looked around, suddenly noticing that, wherever they were, it wasn't dead or dying, the grass here was green and the trees surrounding them were brown and healthy.

"Err... Where are we? Are we even on campus?" Silas asked, looking from Moka to Cho, wondering which one had brought him here.

"Yes, but not many people know about this place... You should've seen the look on the headmaster's face when he caught me here." Chol smiled, before she herself sat down with no invitation "but, well... My people are drawn to places like this..." She looked over at the gentle spring, "beautiful places, that reflect a lot of sunlight." She was lost in her own thoughts for a moment, before she looked to Silas. "So, what happened?" She asked, "what'd the Succubus do that burned you so bad?"

It was moments like this that Silas was glad he'd adopted the larger hoods, back in Empire. The shadows cast over his face kept his eyes from view, subsequently keeping the direction of his gaze - which was now pointed firmly downwards - similarly hidden. Silas sat down, slowly, taking the time to come up with a believably altered version of the truth; he didn't want to lie to either of the two girls in front of him, but neither of them would believe or accept the whole truth.

"She..." Silas hesitated, as Moka sat down "I've... Got something of a history with people trying to probe my mind." He settled upon, "when it first happened it frightened the hell out of me... And when I tried to escape it, I ended up knee-deep in a situation where that kind of stuff surrounded my every waking moment." _And some not-so-waking moments, too._

"What happened?" Chol asked, bluntly.

Silas looked at her, his shrouded eyes almost pleading with her to not allow him to fall into these memories, but she didn't back down, so Silas sighed.

"I lived in a... Predominantly Human area, before Yokai." He began, not noticing the look of sympathy coming from the Vampire, "there were a lot of my kind around, but we're... Different. Our monster abilities don't appear until our later years, if at all." He explained, "but... Something happened one day and the city I lived in got cordoned off..." He chose his words carefully, any fool with an internet connection - like the one provided by the school, free of charge - could take the specifics and look up the Empire Event. "After that happened the Humans started going rabid, society committed suicide, it became every man for himself... But that was when a lot of my kind started developing... And one thing you've got to understand about people like me is that no two are the same... Some of us can manipulate lightning, others smoke, I heard rumors that one of us could manipulate _glass,_ or _paper_." He explained, biting his tongue for that last remark. "I, however... Am what you would call a special case... One in a million, so to speak, and since there are so few of us in the first place, that makes me more than a regular kind of special. My abilities let me... Borrow... The abilities of other monsters... And I say borrow, but I mean keep, I don't give them back, but they don't lose them.

"Well... When monsters figured out they could easily survive in this place by using their powers, they _did. _Gangs started forming, all kinds of crazy stuff... But I... I was fifteen at the time, I just wanted to find my Dad and get out of this mess. One day, however... I bumped into this one guy, whose abilities allowed him to manipulate smoke. He was one of this independent guys, no gang affiliations, but he still killed to get what he wanted." Silas explained, "when I bumped into this guy, was when my abilities manifested... I... Leeched his powers and took them for my own... But without the know-how to use them, I wouldn't get anywhere... So alongside his powers, I leeched his memories too. I _saw_ what this guy did when law broke down... He killed people for food, for worthless money, for _fun..._ It horrified me, the memories of what I saw in his head still haunt me, to this day I have nightmares, either about that guy, about the city, or about what he did, it doesn't matter." He heard the Vampire audibly react at his recounting of Empire and of the Smoke Conduit, but he didn't hear Chol do or say anything, though his peripheral vision was blocked by his hood, so the Conduit couldn't see the hand that went to cover her mouth.

"But... When I was in his mind... He was in mine. I was younger than him, far younger, so he had a lot less to sift through, so he saw a lot more." Silas explained, shuddering, but he closed his eyes and brought his body back under control, his face contorting into a scowl as he did so. "He was... Under the impression, that I'd stolen part of his powers... So he told me he'd find me, that he'd hunt me to the ends of the earth and he'd kill anyone in his way to take back what was his... I was young at the time, I had no idea what was going on, I didn't know yet what I could do, so I ran from him. I hid in all the best places, but he had my memories, he knew _exactly_ where to look." Silas remembered the haunting feeling, the horrifying sight of the burly man ripping apart walls with his enhanced strength, dark skin covered with the red hued smoke. "I knew all the best places to hide, so _he_ knew all the best places to hide... He was everywhere I was, haunting me, following me, trying to kill me everywhere I went... I finally had to escape to a different part of the city, one I knew nothing about... But as luck would have it, I fell _right_ into the part of the city that was being ruled by someone who could invade my mind _on command..._ Worse still she could spread her powers through the water..." Silas looked up, at the horrified look in Moka's eyes, and then in turn at the morbidly interested look in Chol's, "any idea how scary it is, to know that the thing that allowed life to evolve on this planet would also, with barely a sip, make yours hell for hours on end?" He asked, the girls shook their heads, their back-length hair flowing with the motions. "It's the scariest thing imaginable... What's worse, the woman that had the power tried to use it on me. So now I had one guy hunting me that I _could_ run from, and one guy I could _not_ run from. Both able to use anything they'd gotten from my mind at will in their jihad on my psyche." Silas said, slowly. "I told Kurumu I'd kill her because I promised myself, once I got out of that city... That _no one_ would enter my mind again. _No one."_ He repeated, though his tone suggested he said it more for his own sake than her's.

Chol allowed Silas a few minutes, before she prodded softly, "what ever happened to them?"

Silas looked up, "hm?"

"The guy and the girl."

"The girl eventually stopped talking." Silas said.

Chol noticed his omission, "and the guy?" She pressed.

The look in Silas' eyes said what his lips were too slow to convey, "don't make me relive _that_ memory, Chol." He whispered, almost inaudibly, as he looked away, staring intently at the spring in the center of the beautiful green meadow. "There's a reason I've locked it up."

* * *

Shivering in her dorm room, her thralls outside begging to be let in, to comfort her, Kurumu Kurono was equally parts terrified, angry, embarrassed, and confused. That monster from her class, VaSilas, whatever he was, was downright _terrifying, _there was no doubt in her mind that he had to be connected to Komiya's disappearance, the scandle still fresh in her mind because he had been the first to refuse her for that bitch Moka Akashiya. Embarrassed she was, however, because she was a _Succubus,_ the heart of any man in the world could be hers with even the smallest push, either figuratively or literally. So how had _this_ man refused her? She could tell by looking into his eyes, neither of the girls he was with had won any romantic feelings from him, though they both were wanting. So with such perfect conditions, how on Earth had he refused her? Did it have something to do with his species? What kind of monster was he?

_Wait..._ She thought, blinking as a piece fell into place, and like the corner piece for a jigsaw puzzle, the other pieces quickly began falling into their respective positions. _Has anyone seen what kind of monster he is?_ She wondered, thinking over the stories her slaves had told her. VaSilas had reportedly gotten into several fights during his two weeks in the school, yet all of his abilities centered around weapons and trickery, much like a Human.

_But... There's no way he's a Human..._ The Succubus thought, her cheek twitching at the memory of the burning smoke that had hovered just a few inches from it, mere hours ago. _But... What **could** he be? I've never heard of a species that could manipulate lightning or smoke... Even Elementals - extinct as they are - only focused upon Fire, Water, Air and the Earth..._ She blinked, her head beginning to ache as she tried to fit the puzzle together. _I wonder if mom would know..._ And with that single, mundane thought, another piece fell perfectly into place, as one neuron fired into another, sparking a seemingly unrelated memory in the Succubus' mind, one of her mother staring at a television screen in horror at the recovered footage of a new weapon the Humans had tested on themselves, one that had brought with it a plague that had killed Human and Monster alike, save for those few individuals that had been immune to it.

Thinking on it, Kurumu could remember her mother being obsessed with the news reports of the weapon, she couldn't remember what it was called, but she remembered the shock in her mother's eyes and her own when her mother had come home one day, files and DVD's taken from a Slave in hand: the two had seen some of the after-effects of the weapons' detonation, some of the Humans within its radiation cloud had been mutated, being gifted with powers and abilities only monsters knew.

Kurumu blinked.

She blinked again, her mind brought to a sudden and rapid halt as it revolved solely around that one thought.

_My god... Could he be...?_ She wondered, quickly coming to the conclusion that, somehow, some_why_, John VaSilas must have been one of the Humans her mother had told her about, from the files from some man in an organization she hadn't bothered to remember. Looking back on it, it seemed far more likely that VaSilas was one of these beings than he was some sort of elemental hybrid.

_With this... I could get him run out of here... Show him right for doing that to me in front of all those people..._ Thought the seething Succubus, _but... I would need proof._ She looked up, her slaves were still at her door, she smiled as she got up and walked towards it; if it worked for her mother, it could work for her, right?

She opened the door, to the immense delight of her slaves.

"I will kiss the man that brings me _everything_ there is to know about John VaSilas."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 7

* * *

_"I've read a lot of R/V fanfiction in my day, not all of them on [FanfictionNet]. Let me tell you, I've only met one author who could properly guage how effective **one** determined Human can be against an entire faction of monsters who could very well tear the (censored) apart.  
"Face it, Fanon, **one** determined Human can change the course of history."_  
~Anonymous

* * *

John VaSilas found himself standing on the campus of the academy this Sunday morning. The late morning sky above him was a bright shade of gray, with the sun being hidden behind a thin veil of clouds. Silas had expected several things out of the Club-Orientation day, he had thought he'd seen posters and maybe a few criers, walking around and advertising clubs. What he had been presented with, and was staring at now, was far beyond what he'd expected. Instead of a light-hearted affair, with perhaps a little inter-club hostility, there was an enormous festival set up.

As far as Silas could see, and even past that, there were booths, show-stages, all sorts of small showcases for each individual club. In his immediate vicinity, Silas could see the Fortune Telling Club's booth, and the small tent pitched up behind it, and across the way from it he saw a booth advertising a 'vivisection' club. Silas wasn't interested in either, though, he didn't believe in fortune telling and vivisection sounded disgusting. Hands in his pockets and hood drawn tight, Silas was waiting for Moka and Chol, both of them had said they wanted to accompany him in looking for clubs, so it was with that in mind that Silas was simply mulling about on the border between school and festival.

Silas had to admit, as he watched the festival go on, that it brought a certain _life_ to the otherwise dead school. Whereas, just yesterday even, the school would have been deathly silent, with only a slight white-noise stemming from students walking too and fro, conversing all the while, now the place seemed _alive._ There was all sorts of warm colors and light hearted conversation, it reminded Silas of Empire City, before The Blast, anyhow. He watched, leaning up against the wall of the school building, as people with bright smiles entered the club-festival, all of them giddily ready to be enraptured by the skills and abilities of the myriad clubs of monsters.

"John VaSilas." Said a familiarly deep, calm, and polite voice.

A surprised Conduit casually looked over to where the voice had came from, and true to his suspicion, Kuyou Tanzin was standing there, arms politely held behind his robed back. The blonde fire-wielder seemed less tense today than he had the last time Silas had seen him, but Silas could tell by looking in his eyes he was on his way to Enforcer duty.

"Kuyou." Silas shoved off the wall and extended his hand, "what's up, man?" He asked.

Kuyou accepted the gloved hand and shook it, "Enforcer duty, I am afraid." Said the fire-wielder, "I was on my way there now, actually... Would you care to join me?"

Silas blinked, "err... I'm kind of waiting on some folks... We're going to check out the clubs." He said. _Not to mention that you just invited me to Enforcer work... Can you even do that?_

"Oh, it will not take long, it is a simple mission, we are checking in on reports of kidnapping." Said Kuyou, as he began walking, "I thought you would be interested in seeing how we work..." A pause as he thought of the next words to use, "the Humans in the public service have a term they use..." He said absently, as Silas followed him.

Silas thought a moment, "a ride-along?" He suggested.

A flash of agreement in Kuyou's eyes, accentuated by his grin. "Yes... A ride along." He said, "as I told you before, one of the duties of the Public Safety Commission is to protect the students. When the Students' lives are threatened, the headmaster brings us in to deal with the problem."

"I see." Silas was silently wondering where he had been when the enormous mud man and the skin-monsters had crucified Moka and attacked him. "I guess this has something to do with the situation?" He asked, as the two walked through the festival, several eyes were attracted to the two and the students gave them a wide berth, though if it was because Kuyou was PSC, or because Silas had threatened the school's most popular girl the previous morning, was up to interpretation.

"Quite." Nodded the fire-wielder, "you may have noticed this by now, but as it is early in the year, I shall explain this to you. Disappearances at Yokai Academy are a regular occurrence. Being a monster school, these things happen... However when patterns are noticed in the murders or disappearances, that is when we begin investigating." He explained, "a pattern has been noticed this last week, part, half, or near Humans have been disappearing."

Silas blinked, "run that by me again? There actually _are_ Humans at this school?"

Kuyou grunted, "don't be absurd, a Human would stick out here like a sore thumb. There are no Humans at this school, that is a fact." He stated firmly, "but part, half, or near Humans do... Unfortunately, exist within the Monster community. Part Humans are monsters with Human blood somewhere in their bloodline, be it immediate or distant, Half Humans are monsters who have a Human parent, and near Humans are full-blooded Monsters that border on Humanity."

Silas wondered if he would be considered a near Human. "So what tripped the radar?"

"The easiest way to describe to you what a Near Human would be would be to show you a witch, which, I understand, this school contains five of. All, of which, have disappeared. Then the half Humans, of which there are several dozen, half of which have disappeared, the rest have been put under protective custody. Then the part Humans, which, as an unfortunate fact, this school has many of." He explained, "we have tracked disappearances of many of the part, half, or near Humans and have discovered a pattern because of it. At first we believed that they were being kidnapped by a local gang, Anti-Thesis, but they are monster hybrids, thus they do not have much qualms with Human/Monster hybrids, as they are functionally the same."

Silas was having a bit of trouble following the fire-wielder, but he got the gist of what he was saying. "So you think you've found where they're bringing the near Humans?" Silas asked, to which, Kuyou nodded. "And instead of bringing along backup... You bump into me and think - Hey! He's a stand up fellow, let's bring him along!'...?"

Kuyou stared at Silas a moment, "no... I have heard rumors of you and your monster abilities, and am still curious as to what species can manipulate smoke and lightning as you do." He explained, "I decided after much thought that I would bring you, if not for my own curiosity, to have another potentially S-Class monster on this rescue mission... Because as important as saving the students are, winning them is just as, if not, _more_ important." The fire-wielder explained, as the dull roar of the festival got further and further behind them. "Imagine the support we would garner if two S-Class monsters went in to rescue near-Humans. It would show the students that we even 'care for the little guy', as the Humans would say." He explained.

Silas nodded, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. _In other words, you want some good publicity so you're kissing a baby._

* * *

"What is it with gangs, this academy, and abandoned buildings?" The Conduit thought aloud, staring at the looming former-cafeteria ahead of him. The storm clouds above it had moved in suddenly, and it was obvious that the sky was ready to rain, as thunder and lightning rocked the heavens and the earth.

"The forest around Yokai Academy is far from dead, John." Said Kuyou, "many times the Headmaster has had to move many of the school buildings because of the forest's more territorial tendencies. Many of these 'abandoned' buildings have been left within the last few years, and cast out into the forest by the Headmaster. As you can see, nature retakes the buildings rather quickly." He explained, indicating the growing tree routes reaching up the walls of the building, illuminated bright white by the flashes of lightning.

"Ah." Silas didn't really have any response for that, he had no idea _how_ to respond to that. "So... What's the game plan?" He asked the Head Enforcer.

"How completely can you shift into smoke?" Kuyou asked, "and how long can you hold the form?"

Silas, in response, smoke-dashed straight through the fire-wielder. "As for how long... I dunno, how long do you need me to do so?"

"I want you to enter as subtly as you can, through those broken windows on the roof." Kuyou said, indicating the windows in question. "I will wait ten seconds after I lose visual sight of you before I enter the building. After which, I will speak to the present gang members, I shall give them one chance to hand over their hostages. If they take this chance you will make yourself known by rematerializing on the ground floor. If they refuse this attack in any way we will fight, all safeties off."

Silas blinked, "as in... Kill them?"

"Yes." Said Kuyou to the chorus of thunder.

"Err... Is that mandatory? I'd rather not kill when I can avoid it." Silas couldn't count on two hands how many times he'd taken a life, but he deeply regretted each time he had done so, up to and including the Mud Monster from his previous fight.

"John, they have kidnapped dozens of near Humans and we have no idea what they are doing to them. If they attack us it is our moral duty to take them out of the equation entirely." Said the Fire-Wielder. "If you do not want to go forward, I'm certain the newspaper club is still accepting applications."

Silas stared at the fire-wielder. _If I leave this guy, and go back to Moka and Chol, he'll walk in there and slaughter those people... At least if I go in there I can try to stun them before he gets his mitts on 'em._ "I never said I didn't want to go forward, Kuyou, I just said I don't think we need to end so many lives, needlessly." Knowing that the subject was lost, Silas smoke-dashed away, hoping it wouldn't let loose and start raining as he flew towards the building.

It had taken Silas several trials by fire to figure out how to fly with his smoke-dash, and he still couldn't perfectly defy the forces of gravity with it, but he was good enough that the Conduit could travel vast distances in his smoke form. He flew to the roof of the abandoned cafeteria, and after a few moments, was able to spread himself thin and enter the building without bringing too much attention to himself. Now essentially floating on the ceiling as a thinly spread sheaf of smoke, Silas got a good look at the building. It reminded him of the few Reaper Camps he'd seen in the Neon, the near-Humans - of which, there were _many - _were all being kept in cages lining the walls of the building. From the ground to the ceiling there were cages, many of them filled with near Humans.

Silas didn't have enough time to look, as his attention had been drawn by Kuyou's entrance into the cafeteria, but he could have sworn he saw a kid in one of the cages in the center of the room. Silas' gaze was drawn to Kuyou, who was quickly descended upon by two monsters, both in their Human form.

"My name is Kuyou Tanzin." Said the fire-wielder, "I am the head enforcer of the Public Safety Commission and you all have been accused of kidnapping -" There was only the slightest of pauses, "- one hundred and ninety six members of the Student Body. I shall give you one chance and one chance only to release these students with no repercussions, refusing this opportunity will result in a battle that will claim your lives." He said loudly, and clearly, to the rapidly approaching monsters.

Silas rematerialized on a girder, retrieving his chain from the sling-bag as he did so, watching Kuyou act and interact with the monsters around him. The monsters were staring at the robed figure, he could see what was going to happen just before it happened. He wrapped his chain around his hand, weighted end gripped in his palm, just as the first figure turned into a brute not at all unlike Saizo. The figure threw a punch, which Kuyou caught. Kuyou held the hand with what looked like no effort, Silas knew this was his opportunity, and leapt from the girders.

"Thank you." He didn't hear Kuyou say, just before he slammed into the ground with an electrically charged impact.

Shockwaving outwards was a wave of electricity, sending many of the monsters to their feet. Those that remained standing rapidly shifted to their monster forms, and charged the two with reckless abandon. Silas' chain was unfurled and swinging through the air, superheated by the smoke he channeled through it. Each impact slammed into its target with a small explosion of smoke, ash and sulfur, sending his opponent hurtling towards the ground as another came to replace him. Silas used the chain as much as a whip as he used it like a ball and chain, the weighted end of it swinging through the air and impacting with loud, bone-breaking cracks and even louder claps of smoke.

Kuyou noticed how Silas didn't change into his monster form, as he himself was cloaked in golden flames, his features taking on a more fox-like appearance as the raw force of his energy caused all - save for, interestingly enough, the hooded Monster - to pause and stare at the spectacle before them. Still holding the fist of the brute that attempted to punch him, his steel grip crushing it like a toothpick, Kuyou calmly slammed his own fist into the brute's jaw. The air itself took a few moments to catch up with Kuyou's attack before it literally was set ablaze, golden flames trailing behind each one of Kuyou's violent, vicious attacks, and in moments his opponent was on the ground, burnt, charred, and dead as iron.

Silas could feel the heat coming from Kuyou's slice of the battlefield, but was too preoccupied with his own opponent to catch a glimpse of Kuyou's monster form. His chain viciously snapping back and forth like a wrecking ball, his opponents were either kept away from him or were brought in close and debilitated wholesale. After knocking out a particularly mean looking wolf-monster, Silas felt something leap onto his back and begin clawing at it. Silas felt the monster's claws draw blood, and with a yelp of fear he smoke-dashed out from underneath the monster, reappearing a few feet away, standing above one of the burning corpses Kuyou had left.

Now able to size up the monster, Silas noticed how his rabid attacks belied the monster's unassuming demeanor, the unkempt, short silver hair hanging loosely over his green eyes, which were filled to the brim with killer intent.

"You don't know what you're doing, Conduit." Said the teen, as Silas absorbed the smoke off of the smoldering body beneath him. "You _seriously_ don't know what you're doing." The ground began shaking as the silver-haired monster spoke.

All of Silas' instincts told him to turn around right now, and when he did so he was visibly stunned at what he saw. He recognized the hulking Lizard as the one that Kuyou had blasted its arm off, but now its arm had been replaced by _stone,_ the very same stone that had enveloped parts of its body, forming an armor the likes of which Silas couldn't help but think looked familiar. Kuyou, on the other side of the room, tossed away his opponent, and looked at the lizard, which was somehow larger than it had been when last they met.

"You can take that one, man, I'll take the pretty boy." Silas said with a faux-politeness, as his gaze turned back to the silver haired monster, who was now sporting some sort of organic scythe looking weapon where his right arm had been. "Wait, can we switch -" The monster leapt forward, swinging its scythe far faster than Silas could have kept up with.

Silas quickly found himself on the defensive, smoke-dashing whenever the Monster got to close, and trying to whittle away at its seemingly inexhaustable stamina with ranged attacks. The monster refused to give up, however, seeming to be impervious to Silas' attacks. Silas sent lightning bolts at the monster, but it took them in stride, he blasted it in the face with smoke and it simple batted them away. Silas slammed the weighted end of his electrified, superheated chain into the monster, but its scythe caught the chain and, after it wrapped around the organic-metallic weapon, the monster yanked Silas over to him. Silas barely had enough time to smoke dash past the monster.

_I need a game changer..._ Silas thought, breathing heavily as he heard Kuyou engage the rock lizard behind him. _I could try an Orbital Drop... But I'd risk hitting the near Humans... Lightning poses the same risk, and I'm indoors. _Silas got an idea when Nature reminded him whose side she was on, and let loose a loud chorus of thunder and a bright show of lightning; grinning, the Conduit smoke dashed through the entrance to the abandoned building, the silver-haired, bodily armed monster in hot pursuit. _I'll have to bring him onto a level playing ground. _

Outside, the rain wasn't falling and Silas was perfectly fine with that. When the Monster left the building he was hit in the chest with a powerful bolt of electricity, and another, and another, Silas' hands moving as fast as lightning as electricity and smoke surged from them and into the monster. The Conduit was practically dancing, with the way his arms were gesticulating in a blindingly fast manor; after a sustained assault Silas extended his arms skyward and pulled them back down to the ground, pulling with them a continuous stream of lightning. Silas kept up this attack for six seconds before he let it go, the lightning storm above him feeding his energy reserves, keeping him far from being tapped out.

When the dust cleared, the silver haired monster was revealed, still standing. Horribly burned and seriously disfigured on his left side, but still standing, nonetheless. Moreover, he was _cackling._

"Oh... They were _not_ wrong about you!" Shouted the monster, as he took another combat stance, "you are something else!" It sprinted forward, catching the Conduit by surprise.

_I've got to hit him again!_ Silas thought, dashing out of the way of the Monster's attack and, once he reappeared, whipping him with his chain. _I need to get him soaking wet, I need to hit him again!_ He looked to the sky, the conditions were perfect for a rainstorm, but the sky was playing hard to get. _I need - Shit!_ Silas was too late to dodge the next attack launched by the monster, he felt his scythe cut into his arm and draw blood. With a yelp of pain, Silas smoke dashed away, before reappearing and blasting the Monster repeatedly with smoke and electricity. Lightning was the Conduit's best bet, but it _had_ to work this time, and he knew it would if he could get the monster _sopping_ wet.

_Wait... That's it!_ Silas smoke dashed back inside the building, arriving just in time to see a heavily breathing fire-wielder execute the lizard golem. "Kuyou! I need you to make a fireball, a _big_ fireball, and launch it at the sky!" The monster crashed back into the building, sprinting straight for the Conduit. _"No questions!"_ He smoke dashed away and slammed his chain into the monster, _"do it!"_

Kuyou didn't question the Conduit, in his hand formed a fireball; he launched it vertically, it melted the aluminum roof and soared straight for the sky as Silas fended off the monster. It took the flaming guyser two seconds to reach the clouds, and when it did, the effect was almost instantaneous. The golden flames rapidly evaporated the water in the clouds, which coalesced into more clouds, before being burned again by the flames. In seconds the water had boiled away and formed clouds three times, and when the flames disappeared, the rain began to fall. Silas knew he had a weakness to water, and assumed the fire-wielder did to, so this was his one shot.

The Conduit smoke-dashed directly into the monster, tackling it, their forward momentum causing the two to sail outside, where it was now pouring rain. Silas felt the electric shock as the rain pelted his beaten body, but he ignored the pain, keeping the monster at bay as he beat it with his chain, and retreated before it could hit his arm again. Silas kept the monster outside, under the rainfall for what felt like years before he finally decided the monster was wet enough. Silas prepped an Orbital Drop and, when he felt the scythe of the rushing monster just an inch from his face, he leaped into the sky, as high as he could go. Lightning struck him as he soared upwards, and upon reforming into a Human being again, the energy of the entire storm began to flow into the electrokinetic Conduit. With a loud battle cry, the Conduit hurtled back towards the ground, smoke and true lightning trailing behind him as he flew towards the silver haired monster. The two impacted with a loud, deafening thunder clap, as smoke exploded outwards in a massive wave, and lightning struck them both in a continuous stream. For ten entire seconds lightning struck the two, before it finally stopped, followed soon thereafter by the rain.

* * *

Kuyou watched as the dust and debris settled, a look of equally deep interest and suspicion on his face. The heavily breathing fire-wielder watched the wet battlefield outside intensely, wondering which one would prevail of the two. He hadn't expected a _Chimera,_ of all things, to be participating in the attack, but the way VaSilas had dealt with it, he hadn't seen anything like it. VaSilas seemed to know he was outmatched, so he kept his distance, trying to come up with a strategy to defeat the monstrel as he whittled away at its defenses.

VaSilas was nothing if not resourceful, in his position, Kuyou wouldn't have thought to get the monster _wet_ before hitting him with lightning again.

But something was nagging at his mind, the Lizard he'd just fought had stone golem powers. So far as he knew, there were no golem monstrels attending this year, there were _natural_ golems, yes, but not hybrid lizard/golems. How had it gotten Golem powers, then, because Golems were one of the few monster races that couldn't transmute their powers via blood infusion - they _had_ no blood, after all. It couldn't have been transplanted a Golem arm, Kuyou knew for a fact that was impossible.

And what it had said before he had executed it, did that have something to do with this?

Kuyou shook himself from his thoughts when he saw a figure limping through the smoke, dust and debris. Fire ran up and down his arms as he prepared for the worst, but through the smoke came John VaSilas, nursing a bleeding arm, but still alive. The monster chuckled, "you should see the other guy." He dragged his thumb across his cheek, "he's more crispy-bacon than he is flesh."

_At least I know one of his weaknesses... Now._ Thought the fire-wielder, as he saw the wet monster visibly flinch at each short-circuited electric discharge.

"Do you require medical attention?" Kuyou asked, calmly.

The monster, whose hood had fallen off because of his last attack, shook his head. "Could you do me a favor, though? Dry me off?" He requested.

Kuyou sent a heatwave in the monster's direction, and a moment later his wish had been granted, the monster was dry. "Ah... Thanks, for that." He said, reaching into his back pack, chain hanging limply from his wrist. Kuyou watched interestedly as the monster pulled out a half dozen batteries, and a moment after he clenched his fist around them, electricity began runninug from his fist, up into his arm, and into the junction between arm and shoulder. Kuyou saw, wide-eyed, as the monster's injuries healed before his very eyes, as it drew energy from the batteries.

After a moment's light show, the batteries were drained, and while VaSilas was still injured, they looked far more manageable now, a sentiment the monster seemed to share, as he threw the batteries to the ground and stretched his back. "That was fun." He breathed, a chuckle following.

Kuyou eyed the monster for a moment, "indeed." He said, "you show great ingenuity, and strength, John." He mentioned, "Not only did you actually defeat a Chimera, but you did so in a rather intuitive way... Using your own weakness against him to lull him into a false sense of security, only to blast him with your strength... It is an interesting battle strategy."

VaSilas stared a moment at Kuyou, "I have no idea what you just said... I just knew my lightning storm worked once when he was dry... So it should have worked better when he was wet." Said the monster, still breathing heavily. "So... Changing the subject... What do we do with them?" He indicated the cages all around the walls.

Kuyou followed his gaze, there were far too many to transport on his own, and the monster accompanying him was too injured and exhausted to help. "You go to your room and get some rest." Kuyou ordered, "I shall call in a few enforcers and clean up in here." He paused, looking at VaSilas' opponents, noting that many of them were restrained to the ground and still breathing. "And I shall place them in cells."

The hoodless monster nodded in agreement, but didn't right away acknowledge the Head Enforcer's orders. "At least let me take that one to the nurse." VaSilas pointed at the cage in the center of the room.

Kuyou followed VaSilas' gaze, in the center of the building was a cage, within said cage was a figure, far too small to be considered an adult, smaller even than a teenager. It only took Kuyou a moment to realize who she was, the wand hanging from the cage's corner being a dead give away. One of Yokai Academy's few resident Witches, and only student under the age of thirteen, these thugs and their Chimera leader had abducted Yukari Sendou.

_That may explain why the Lizard had golem features..._ The Head Enforcer thought, _they may have tried to force her to heal him... And when she couldn't do so, they tried other means of replacing his arm... It still doesn't explain what he said to me... Though._ Thought the Enforcer, as his gaze turned to the monster next to him.

"Are you certain you can carry her back to the school?" He asked.

VaSilas shrugged, "I've got more batteries if I really need 'em, plus some paper I can set on fire."

Kuyou thought on it for another moment, before he relented. "Fine." He nearly demanded the monster have his report on his desk by the end of the day, but then he remembered that the monster was not yet an Enforcer.

The two went their separate ways after exchanging nods and a handshake.

* * *

"I should not have taken this gig." The Conduit groaned, as he shifted the weight of the unconscious girl - who could _not_ have been older than thirteen - piggy-backing on his spine. "How the hell do they make twelve year olds so damn heavy?" He wondered as he broke the forest, and saw the castles and school buildings a close distance away. "You're lucky you're a kid... Kid." The Conduit said, his mind coming dangerously close to working on auto-pilot as it relived Empire.

Coming to the rescue, Silas heard the light, womanly voice that could only belong to Moka Akashiya cry out. "Silas!" He looked to his left and saw the Vampire making a break for him, a half dozen members of a club he couldn't recognize trailing behind her, lecherously.

"Err... Need Help?" The Conduit asked, after the Vampire cowered behind him. _She can't really be this helpless with that Rosary... Can she?_ The Conduit wondered, as his gaze shifted from the Vampire to the monsters, some collection of lizards, slugs, and some sort of water/slime hybrid.

"They've been chasing me all day, ever since Chol left me!" Moka whispered, clutching Silas' shredded jacket with a death grip, made all the more strong by her ever-present superhuman strength.

"Uh huh..." Said a sighing Silas, "I'll deal with them, can you take this one?" He jostled the kid, Moka looked up, only just now realizing her presence. She blinked and took the kid, carrying her-bridal style as the Conduit, now free of the weight, rolled his shoulders.

"Alright." He said, "I'm going to say this once..." In an electrified, smokey flash, the chain was unfurled and whipped out to the side of the Conduit, making his intentions almost painfully clear. "Leave." His right arm was enveloped in electricity as his left in smoke, showing the lechers in front of him that he meant business.

The monsters got the hint, and were practically scrambling over each other to get away from the Conduit, who, upon second-glancing himself, wondered if it was because they thought he was powerful, or could tell by looking at his bloody, haggard demeanor that he wasn't playing games. Silas shrugged and whipped the chain back around his right fist, and looked to Moka, who he could easily tell was taking in his generally beaten appearance.

"Where have you been all day?" She asked with a certain innocent bluntness that made Silas smile.

"You remember I told you about Kuyou Tanzin?" He asked, she nodded, "the guy decided to take me on a ride-along." Silas began, taking the kid again and beckoning Moka to follow him as they took the long way to the Nurse's office, skirting all the way around the still raging club-festival. "Apparently some group's been kidnapping the school's near Humans, for _what _I've no clue, but they've been taking them all the same." He explained, "when we showed up, there had to be two or three dozen people in cages, like this one -" He indicated the kid on his back, "- so Kuyou walks in, picks a fight and we start going at it, tearing through the monsters until these two guys show up... One's this monster hybrid thing that could use his skin and transform it into weapons... Another's this lizard/golem hybrid. Kuyou takes the Hybrid, I take the skinhead." He explained, not noticing the almost interested shine coming from Moka's rosary. "Turns out, the Skinhead's some kind of super-monster, I hit the guy with everything I had and he just went psychotic, laughing as he came back at me."

Moka's eyes went down to her Rosary, then back up to the Conduit. "How did you win, though?" She wondered.

"I got the guy soaking wet, and hit 'em with some lightning... But not before he cut the living hell out of me and my coat."

Moka blinked, suddenly reminded of something, "you are covered in blood, Silas, shouldn't _you_ be going to the hospital?" She asked, concerned.

If Silas had had use of his hands, he would have waved the concern away. "Nah, I'll be fine. I drink up some electricity, set something on fire and absorb the smoke, get a good night's rest, I'll be good as new."

Moka tilted her head, "you can heal by absorbing electricity?" She wondered.

"Yeah." Said Silas, "if it hadn't been thundering and lightning outside I might have had a lot tougher of a fight against the skinhead." He said, "but, I won, and I took this one with me when Kuyou said I should head to my room and sleep it off."

Moka nodded, content with the information, and the two fell silent as they walked into the school, making their way for the nurse's office. "So... Why did you bring Yukari specifically?"

Silas blinked, "who?" Moka nodded to the girl in his arms, "oh..." He thought about how best to word his statement, "err... Remember when I told you about the Human city I came from?" Moka's eyes lowered as she nodded, "let's just say... I've had enough of kids dying when I can do something about it."

Moka was silent for a few moments, as the nurse's office came into view. "Do you... Need to talk about it?" She finally asked, almost forcing the words out as if there were a barrier she had to push through.

Silas shook his head, "nope." He said quickly.

Moka nodded, but pushed the subject a little harder. "Okay... But... If you ever _do_ need to talk... I'll always be here." She said with a light grin, as they came to a stop in front of the nurse's office.

Silas paused, just outside the nurse's room; with a look to the Vampire and another moment's silence, he said "thanks, Moka." with a nod, before he pushed his way into the office.

* * *

Kuyou Tanzin sat alone in his Enforcer office. He hadn't bothered to change out of his sweaty robes, that smelled of smoke, blood and flame. He stared at his computer screen, upon which the record for John VaSilas was plastered. He had been staring at this record for hours now, the sun was low in the sky, casting a deep orange glow over his entire office. This record had so many holes in it Swiss Cheese was more solid, and yet each time he pried, he was shut down by the more important members of the school's staff.

_"That thing is human!"_ The lizard golem had roared at him, before the Head Enforcer had executed it, that along with the patch he had ripped off of the lizard's coat painted a picture about John VaSilas that the fire-wielder did not like looking at. The patch, now seated in his desk, sewed with black and yellow material, a symbol etched into it resembling a sword in the stone, with the letters 'DUP' stretching across its top. What could _that_ mean?

A knock on Kuyou's door shook him from his thoughts, he turned off the monitor for his computer and beckoned the person enter. Keito poked her purple haired head in the door, "I apologize for disturbing you, Kuyou..." She said slowly, "but..." The tone she used suggested she hadn't even said the words and she didn't believe them.

"Spit it out."

"Kurumu Korono is here to see you, specifically."

Kuyou blinked, "the Succubus? Is she here to turn herself in?"

Keito shook her head, "no sir... Much the contrary, she says she has information you want, and is ready to give it to you on the condition of immunity for whatever crimes she has committed thus far."

Kuyou rolled his eyes, _this_ would prove interesting. He nodded to Keito, who brought in the Succubus.

"Be quick with your words, girl, I am a very busy Enforcer." Kuyou said clippedly.

The blue haired girl looked haughty, and tried to maintain an air of being in control, but Kuyou had experience with her kind, he knew how to resist her charms. "I have suspicions that John VaSilas is a Human." She stated, bluntly.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 8

* * *

_Sleep was no longer the temporary respite from the chaotic Hell that life had become. Shivering, plagued by visions not originating from his mind, the Teenager wept as he tried to sleep without sleeping, to think without thinking, to live without living. The Neon district had not been the safe haven he had so desperately hoped it would be, the only thing he could take solace in was that the Hunter was not here, though for how long that lasted, he had no idea.  
_

_"__I'll hunt you down to the ends of the _fucking_ earth to take back what's mine!"_ He could hear, endlessly on repeat in his mind. 

_The man had kept his promise, nowhere the Teenager had hid was safe, everywhere had been known to the Hunter, who endlessly sought the Teenager to take back what was 'his'. The Teenager had watched, both through the man's memories and in person, horrified, as he shoved his smoke-covered hand onto peoples' mouths, the burning, searing hot smoke filling their lungs, each breath they could not physically take hurting as if they were dying. The Hunter knew exactly how to make his victims suffer before they died, and even if he didn't yet know it, he knew exactly how to make the Teenager suffer before he had even come to die, because the Teenager knew that each and every death that happened as the Hunter pursued his pray, were happening because of him. Anyone the Teenager had run to in the Warren were now dead, he had no allies, and word has spread quickly amongst the people that if they saw the Teenager, to steer clear or to refuse help, because the Warren's demon would find them and torture them for whatever information they had. _

_So the Teenager, in a desperate bid to escape, had run to the Neon, his few surviving friends had told him it would be far safer here than it would be in the Warren, where even the Dustmen had learned to fear the Hunter. The Teenager himself had hoped and prayed that the Neon District would prove safer, but fate, as it were, was rarely so kind to the people it called to serve.  
_

_The Neon's 'black water', as many had called it, was poisoning the Teenager, but not with physical ailments or maladies, but rather with mental and psychological visions and tortuous sensations. The Teenager was a Human being, he needed water, there was no 'but' in the matter, without water he would die, but with each sip he took, that murderously psychotic woman would dig her way further into his mind, forcing the Teenager to go for days on end without a single sip of water, before forcing himself to gulp mouthfulls at a time as quickly as he could, to force the visions to come all at once and then leave just as quickly. _

_**Oh... Come now, Kiddo... Just come visit me, I'll end your suffering...** The temptress said through the Teenager's dreams. **I'll give you power, to kill that man, that Hunter...** She could see his fears and knew what words to use to seduce him, each time lowering his defenses to draw him in; it was only through sheer force of will that the terrified, parched, starving Teenager was able to resist her. **You'll learn to love it... I promise.**_

_At least in reality, the Teenager could fight the Hunter, and the Seductress' forces, but in his dreams? When everything was equal game, where he had no defense against psychological attacks? Anything he did, anything he could think of, was overpowered by the Seductress. Powerful attacks he launched at her, to be batted away like a snowball. Searing smoke he would cyclone directly at her face, only to be eaten wholesale and puffed out like a cigarette. Nothing the Teenager did could harm her, all that he did was amuse her and she would rebuke his every attempt with insults and mind-breaking torture.  
_

_The Teenager had once believe in a Hell, he wondered if this was anything like it. _

_"Hey... Kid." The Teenager was almost physically shaken out of his half-sleep state by a hand on his upturned shoulder. _

_With a yelp of fear, the Teen disentangled himself from the trash bags he used as blankets and scrambled away, unintentionally backing into the nearest corner. Terrified, and his vision still blurry from sleep, he haphazardly raised his hand in an attempt to drive off whoever was trying to kill him. _

_"Stay back!" Smoke gathered around his hand and coalesced in his palm, "I'll kill you, I swear!" His voice shook as he made the threat. _

_"Whoa, okay, kid." The voice said, calmly, the Teenager could just barely see the figure raise his hands against the bright light of the rapidly setting sun. "I won't take another step, I'll stay right here." The figure spoke with a calm, friendly voice that reminded the Teenager of his late grandfather."What's your name?" The man asked, he was responded to with silence. "Well, my name's Dan." He said, "I used to be an auto-mechanic before the Blast, so my customers called me 'Dan the Car-Man'..." The Teenager, through his slowly clearing haze, was wondering if 'Dan' was trying to clear the air.  
_

_"What do you want Dan?" The Teenager asked quickly and quietly, not lowering his hand. _

_"I saw a kid sleeping on the streets, I thought I'd offer him a place to sleep, maybe some water." Dan realized that last bit was the wrong thing to say because the area around his feet was peppered with smoke, a warning shot from the Teenager. "Hey, whoa! The stuff we've got's purified, none of the black tar the people up here have been drinkin'." He elaborated, quickly. "Err... How 'bout this." The man, ever so slowly, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a hip-flask. "It's water, kid, don't worry." He placed it on the ground and kicked it to the Conduit.  
_

_Cautiously, the Teenager grabbed the flask, keeping his smoke-enveloped hand pointed at the man. He unscrewed the top and poured a few drops onto his hand, the kid knew what alcohol felt like, in a word it was thicker than water, and this liquid in his hands wasn't alcohol, or any other kind of liquid. All pretense lost, the Teenager voraciously upended the flask and began drinking as if it had been the first sip of water he'd been granted, his entire life. The pure water tasted divine, as if liquid gold was pouring down his throat, moistening it and his tongue with its wonderfulness. _

_The flask now empty, the Teenager removed it from his lips and, with a loud intake of air, wiped the excess off of his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. Breathing heavily now, and his senses in overdrive thanks to the pure water now running through his system, the Teen could get a good look at Dan. He stood tall, most likely a foot taller than he, he wore a blank, black T-Shirt underneath a gray zip-up hoody, he had a rough beard but a close-shaven buzz cut. On his tan face was a kind smile underneath two dark brown eyes. _

_"Alright... Now I'm listening." The Teenager was slowly gaining his composure, he stood up, leaning against the wall. _

_Dan nodded, "that's something." He said, "listen son, I've got a small community running, down underground, in the sewers near a substation." He explained, "we;re pretty much the only thing this city's got to society these days, we take in anyone not in a gang, or trying to run away." He said kindly, "it's safe... Whatever you're obviously running from, it won't find you." _

_The Teenager stared at the man for several moments, his heart pounding in his ears as he was practically being provided safe haven. Could it be true? It seemed too good to be so, but here it was. _

_"I -" _

_"John VaSilas I swear if you don't answer this door I'm breaking it down!" _

* * *

Groaning, John VaSilas was ripped from his pleasantly horrifying dream. He slowly sat up, the blankets from his futon sliding down his bare chest as he held his forehead in his palm. Silas blinked heavily, he had obviously been sleeping hard, what day was it? He glanced around his -

_"Last warning, VaSilas!"_

"Shut the _hell up_!" Silas countered, "give me a damn minute." Few knew the golden rule about John VaSilas: don't wake him up, he had once been awoken by his mother in the middle of the night, and though he had no recollection of the events, the story went that he'd promptly gotten into a shouting match with her that woke up the entire building and nearly got a few policemen called.

Shaking his head, Silas looked around his room again, trying to find the calendar, he had crashed so hard he didn't know what day it was. The Conduit's internal clock told him it was Friday, but apparently he was wrong, it was Saturday the third. Blinking, the Conduit suddenly realized he'd been at this school for an entire month. An entire month of -

The door crashed inwards, Silas acted on instinct and dove out of the way, grabbing his sling-bag and rolling to his feet in one fluid motion. Ever since Empire he had always kept his Sling-Bag equipped with the essentials, so if he had to run he could grab everything he owned and bolt. Now with his bag on his back, Silas assumed a combat stance, electricity running up both arms as a single puff of smoke escaped his nostrils.

Standing in his broken-in doorway was a figure in the robes of a Public Safety Enforcer, looking bored, but cautious at the look of the shirtless Conduit in front of him. Silas didn't know and didn't care if the man was staring at his scars, his bright blue electricity, his unkempt hair, all three, or none, all he knew was that there was an Enforcer he didn't recognize, standing in his doorway.

"The hell do you want?" Silas asked slowly, realizing that it was far too early for classes to begin this Saturday morning.

"You will speak with a more respective tone to a Public Enforcer." The Enforcer, who wore thick rimmed glasses, ordered the Conduit, who thought of a half dozen colorful swear words he could show the monster.

"I'll think about it." The Conduit stated, annoyed, "what do you want? Besides to break down my door. Who the hell are you, anyway?"

"My name is not of importance." The monster stated, "what is important is that Kuyou Tanzin whishes to see you immediately."

Silas blinked, "why does Kuyou want to see me at -" He reached into the pocket on his sling-bag's strap, retrieved his phone, and clicked it on. "- five in the damn morning? The night classes haven't even ended yet." He stated, putting the phone back in his pocket.

"I am not privy to the reasonings of the Head Enforcer, now get dressed and make yourself presentable, you have three minutes before I drag you out of here." The monster said, as he turned to leave.

"You can try." Silas said unafraid; the monster ignored him.

* * *

Now fully dressed, John VaSilas was walking through the PSC office building. He had been let go by the monster he'd affectionately - and openly - referred to as 'Douchebag', and was making his way to Kuyou's office. Silas would admit, the warm interior made of hardwood, plaster, and painting-hung walls, gave the building a comforting, warm feeling.

Silas found the office that belonged to Kuyou, and raised his hand to knock, but paused when he heard raised voices inside. Intrigued, the Conduit leaned forward.

_"- have made my decision, Keito! There is no proof in conjecture and stories! Until I say otherwise, my decision stands! I shall review it when I **return!"** _

_"But what do you plan on finding in the Human world? Why will you not tell me what you have found this last week?" _

_"Because my investigation is **mine, and mine alone!"**_ Kuyou's voice gained a significantly deeper tone, _"if I discover the worst, I will act accordingly!"_ Silas knew his luck was running out, so he knocked twice, before he turned the handle and entered the room.

"Err... What'd I miss?" The hooded Conduit asked, as he entered the room. Repairing the hoody had been simple enough, as it turned out the school had a sewing club, go figure. "Lover's Quarrel?" He grinned.

"Shut the hell up!" Keito barked.

_"Koyama! Outside!"_ Kuyou roared.

Keito gave Kuyou and Silas a look, before she retreated outside, closing the door behind her. Silas looked from the door, to Kuyou, who offered him a seat, which Silas took. "So... What _did_ I miss?"

Kuyou answered disinterestedly, clearly tired of the topic. "Keito is angry that I have to leave campus on investigative business, for an indeterminate amount of time, and we may soon be dealing with a onew recruit?"

"Ah... Who's the lucky Monster?" Silas asked, itching his scalp from beneath his hood.

"You." The fire-wielder said blankly.

Silas paused in his itching, right hand covering half of his face. He blinked, "run that by me again?"

"Rumors fly very quickly around this school, John VaSilas." Said Kuyou, "I know it was you who dealt Anti-Thesis such a hard blow a month ago, and it was you and the Vampire who took down Saizo Komiya." He counted off, "plus your actions against the Chimera last week, they all displayed power unlike anything I have ever seen." The fire-wielder explained, "the decision made itself, I just had to realize it."

Silas felt his heart slow down, was Hitler offering him a job in the Gestapo?

"You... Want me... To join the Public Safety Commission?" Silas reiterated, to the responding nod of the Head Enforcer. "What would that entail?" He wondered, curiously.

"First and foremost, your duties would be split between education and enforcing. Education is paramount for a man still in school, such as yourself. I find my duties split monthly due to my status as a post-education student." The fire-wielder explained, "however, after classes each day you would be given an hour for personal leisure, and the rest of your day would be spent enforcing."

"And... How does one enforce?" All the 'enforcing' experience the Conduit had thus far was stumbling across Kuyou in the woods, and tagging along on a search and destroy mission, if that was common place he may refuse the offer.

"At its core, you are the officer, the judge, and the jury. If you find a crime in progress, you have visual proof, locational alibi, and reason for Enforcement, and the Headmaster has given us clearance to act however we wish with crimes in progress." The fire-wielder explained.

_Explaining why he executes everyone he comes across.._. "And what about those sting operations you seem to always be on?"

"Those are left for the higher-class and higher ranked Enforcers, should you accept, you would only fit one of those categories." Kuyou informed him.

_And not even..._ "Say I don't want to kill everyone I come across, is there some kind of jail here?"

"There is." Kuyou left it at that.

"Okay..." Silas leaned his head back. The situation suddenly felt like he was trying to shove ten pounds of trash into a five pound bag, Kuyou had just dropped something on him that he hadn't expected, not in his wildest dreams. On one hand, with his powers he could definitely do some good, and with the political power that came with the Enforcers, he could do a lot more good than he could without it; but this wasn't Empire City, where less than a quarter of its population had powers, this was Yokai Academy, a literal school for monsters, everyone here was a monster and could tear apart a Human being, powers or no. And what was to say that the Enforcers weren't like the DUP? The differences between them were certainly there, but what was the core separating factor between these people and them?

The fact that the Enforcers accepted monsters?

He _wasn't_ one, though. He wasn't even sure if he was Human or not, he was even less sure if anyone here would accept the 'Conduits are separate from Humans' argument. Least of all Kuyou, who seemed extremely by the books. There was the argument that could be made that Witches were essentially the first Conduits, but Silas had to make a choice.

Or... Did he?

"Can I sleep on it?" Silas asked, lowering his head to make eye contact with the head Enforcer, who nodded.

"Indeed." Said Kuyou, "I have waved your classes for this morning so you could do just that. I will be leaving tomorrow at noon, so if you meet me here at eleven o' clock with your answer, we can get you inducted."

"Ah..." Said Silas, planting his hands on his knees and pushing himself to his feet, "Well then, allow me to sleep on this... I'm a little conflicted at the moment."

Kuyou nodded, smartly, and the two bade their farewells.

Silas now was walking through the campus, the night-students were filing out as the day students were waking up and going about their morning routines. A few who recognized him gave the Conduit a friendly wave and a greeting, which he returned. He was contemplating simply going back to sleep when he got to his room, to think about the PSC later, Silas would have wanted to walk to his room without further confrontation, but fate was a cruel mistress, and as such had other plans for him. Keito Koyama was waiting for him directly on the path, in the center of the campus, a deep scowl planted upon her face. Silas thought he could see a desire to kill in her eyes.

Blinking, Silas tried to see where the 'ignore' option would bring him. For his trouble, a spider's leg slammed into his chest, sending him into a tree. For just a half second, the Conduit considered letting the woman go, she was very obviously pissed, and the Conduit was wondering if she was on the Monster version of the menstrual cycle. This line of thought was dashed when he saw a gob of white, stringy-substance flying straight for his face. Without any recognition, Silas smoke-dashed out of the way, the web bullet slamming into the tree, burrowing deep within it.

"Okay... _What_ the fuck?" Silas asked simply.

"You _know_ what the fuck!" The rapidly transforming spider-woman growled, to a responsive, but confused, blink from the Conduit. "You _know_ what your kind has done to mine!"

_Uh oh..._ Silas had to play his cards carefully, "and what species are we talking about here?"

The spider-woman inhaled deeply. "You _HUMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"_


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 9

* * *

Time slowed to a crawl as it dawned on the Conduit _just what this bitch had done._ She had broadcast, to god and everybody, that he was Human.

To make matters worse, through the sudden, _dead_ silence, Silas heard a voice. He couldn't bring himself to turn to the Vampire it belonged to, "S... Silas?" The voice quivered as it spoke, most understandably so, a bombshell had just been dropped on her, but Silas couldn't bare to look into her eyes, or the eyes of the redhead no-doubt close by.

Silas had to play this game _very_ carefully. He had reasonable doubt on this woman, and anyone watching - which was, essentially, everyone at this point - could tell with one look that Silas was no Human, no _ordinary,_ Human, at least. But if they asked him to go into Monster form, which would be the only way to prove it outright, then he would be in trouble. He had something up his sleeve that would work, but that was a last resort type deal.

"Human." Silas said calmly, but loud enough so that the slowly transforming spider-woman could hear him over the light murmuring of the rapidly growing crowd. "Hm..." Silas smoke dashed to the nearest lamp-post, he leaned up against it and electricity began flowing into his body. "I think..." Another smoke dash, back to his original spot, but now his arms were enveloped by his powers. "You've got the wrong guy."

_"I know what I see, Human!"_ The spider roared, her Human form vanishing as she became more spider than Human.

Silas slowly reached for his chain, secured inside his sling-bag. "Keito, I don't know what who told you... But I am _not_ a Human..." He lied, cleverly masking the quake of his voice by lowering his tone and increasing his volume. "I do _not_ want to fight you." Slowly he dragged the chain out of his bag, "but if you give me no other choice, I will."

"You _have no choice_ in this matter, Human!" The spider roared, charging the Conduit, "if you will not submit, I will carry out your execution!" The spider was blindly rushing the Conduit, her rage clouding her tactics while Silas' calm, level head giving him the advantage.

When the Spider came within striking distance, Silas whipped the chain around, slamming the electrified weighted end into the Spider-woman's head, and sending her off course. "Do I _look_ like a Human, Keito?" Silas demanded, "can a Human do _this -"_ He slammed his whip into the ground, the lightning sparking outwards from the impact point, another slam and superheated smoke exploded outwards. _"- No!_ Humans can not do the things I can! Think about this, think before you do something you regret!"

The Spider woman was beyond reasoning at this point, she rushed forward again, meeting Silas' chain in a fashion similar to how she had met it earlier. This time Silas followed up the attack with a warning shot, a near-lethal electric bolt launched from his hand to the ground right next to the Spider-woman's head. "Keito, calm down and think about this!" The Conduit cried to the hysterical Spider-woman, "I am not a Human! I'm a leech, damn it!" He called out the first word besides 'Conduit' that could describe what he could do, "don't force me to fight you!"

The heavily breathing Spider-Woman got to her eight feet, and looked pensive for a moment, but Silas realized what she was doing a second before she did it. She launched a veritable volley of spider-silk at the Conduit, who smoke-dashed out of the way. The stream of silk followed him as he dodged, with the Conduit finally managing to avoid her entirely by bouncing onto a roof top and leaping off of it, chain curled up around his hand.

_"I warned you!"_ Silas roared as he arced through the air, fist cocked back and electricity funneling through it. The spider just barely dodged his attack, but he managed to tag one of her legs, stunning it numb. The Conduit wasted not a moment in unfurling his chain and swinging it in circles around him, occasionally snapping it outwards and impacting with the Spider, who was trying to find an opening in the Leech-Conduit's defense. He was swinging his chain in an arc around him, surrounding himself in an electrified smoke screen, effectively giving himself a circular zone of influence that he decreed none enter.

The angered Spider shot silk at the Conduit, who slammed the weighted end of his chain into it. The Spider smiled as she knew the chain would stick to the very next thing it hit, but panicked when she saw the Conduit use the chain's momentum to _launch_ it at the Spider at blinding speeds. It slammed into her face, blinding two of her eyes and stunning her as she screamed, her one most exploitable weakness having just been slammed into by a several dozen pound, electrified, superheated, and _adhesive_ chain. Through the haze of pain she saw the Counduit running for her, she tried shooting him with more silk but he seemed to literally turn his body to smoke, the bullets passing harmlessly through him as he ran forward. His hands grasped the end of the chain, but he kept running. She raised her legs, making ready to impale the Human, who, with a determined scowl, leapt into the air, surprising the half-blind Spider-woman, who didn't know where he was going until he landed on her back.

The Conduit planted his feet firmly in the Spider's hairy back and yanked the chain upwards, forcing her neck to bend towards him, stunning the Spider-woman. Like a horse being broken she started thrashing about violently, trying to buck the Conduit off of her, but the Conduit flicked his chain, wrapping it around her neck. Now each violent struggle only served to tighten the grip the chain had on her throat, making it harder to stop the Conduit from choking the spider. The two thrashed about for an entire sixty seconds, before the Spider lost steam and, eventually, slumped forward.

Silas knew this trick, he had used it before. He let go of the chain and launched himself upward, transforming into a column of smoke as he prepared his Orbital Drop. Reaching the apex of his leap, the Conduit rocketed towards the ground as the Spider-Woman decided it was time to 'wake up', only to receive a super-heated, smoke enveloped fist to her skull, cracking it and knocking her out cold.

Now, as Silas burned the silk off of his chain with smoke, he considered his next action. _This school is basically survival of the fittest... I haven't met anyone I couldn't handle, save for ... Maybe Moka, and Kuyou, but the former has her powers locked away by a seal she can't remove, and the latter is more or less on my side... So if I kill her, I'll show all of these people that I'm not one to be trifled with, and I do not take accusations lightly..._ Thought the Conduit as he retrieved his chain. _But in killing her I may inadvertently alienate my only friends... Not to mention that I'd be sacrificing whatev_er _Humanity I may have left... But if I spare her, I'll be seen as a weak - albeit, benevolent - monster, and they may see this weakness as a sign that I'm Human..._ He stared at the unconscious spider below him.

_Life... _He extended his left hand and looked at its empty palm, _or Death?_ He looked at his right hand, clenched in it the weighted end of his chain.

Slowly, the Conduit lowered both hands. _No... I kill her and I'm no better than Him... _Thought the Conduit as the electricity and smoke left his arms.

Suddenly, the Conduit heard a screech of pain, he recognized the voice and whipped around, and there was Kuyou Tanzin, forcing Moka onto her knees and keeping her hair locked tightly in his grip, effectively paralyzing her through the foreign pain. Silas went from cold to brinkmanship in a second, but he kept his cool and raised his hands slowly, subtly scanning the crowds for Chol, hoping she could help.

"Alright, Kuyou... Calm down..." He said slowly, taking slow steps forward.

"I had meant for this to go along a lot quieter." Kuyou had said, tightening his grip in the Vampire's hair. "But now we have no choice." He looked up from the pink haired girl to the Conduit.

"Kuyou, let her go!" Silas said firmly, not yet ready to beg or bargain. "Your fight isn't with her -"

"Oh, but it is." Said Kuyou, confusing the Conduit. "I have it on good authority that not _only_ are you Human, but this girl _knew!"_

"That's not true, Kuyou, she didn't know!" Though Silas couldn't account for the Vampire half of Moka, she had drank his blood after all. "Send her over here and we can talk this out!" His hands were still raised, palms to the ground, in a placating gesture, though with one movement he could launch a missile bolt.

"I will do _no such thing!"_ Kuyou said, "I am a Yokai Academy Public Safety Commission Enforcer, you are accused of the crime of being of the genus Homo, species Sapiens, how do you plead?!"

"Not guilty!" Silas barked, "listen to me, Kuyou, send Moka over here and we can talk about this!" Silas pleaded.

"Of course, why didn't I think of it sooner?" Kuyou put on a false show of smacking himself in the forehead. "Just show us your monster form and all charges will be dropped!"

Silas felt all eyes go to him, "I _can't_ Kuyou, you have no idea what you're dealing with! No idea at all!" He had two options, neither of them were good.

A flash of anger went through Kuyou's eyes, "refusal is just a different way of admitting guilt, John VaSilas!"

"It is _not! Now give me the Vampire and we can talk about this!"_ Silas knew his mistake just a second after he'd made it.

"You want the Vampire?!_ **Fine!"** _Kuyou was wrapped in an aura of white hot flames, Kuyou violently brought Moka to her feet and shoved her to Silas, who saw what Kuyou was going to do. Before he could even shout in defiance, Kuyou blasted Moka in the back with a white-hot fireball.

The Conduit caught the stunned Vampire as she fell forward, her face was contorted in pain and the bare skin on her back was pulsing red, bleeding as it blistered and popped. The Conduit slowly brought the Vampire to the ground, trying to get through to her as she rapidly retreated into unconsciousness. "Moka, Moka! Come on!" He said, trying to resuscitate her, but to no avail. The Conduit couldn't use his electricity to heal her, he knew, he would need powers over flame to undo this damage, but he had no such powers.

Scowl stretching over his face as he checked Moka's weak pulse, he knew he could _get_ those powers.

At least, he sincerely hoped.

Silas stood up slowly, smoke radiating off of his form, taking on a deep, dark red hue. He could feel the beast attempting to seduce him, but he wouldn't give in, not yet.

"Alright, Kuyou... You wanted a war." Silas turned around, clenching one gloved hand in the other. "You've got one." One glove slipped off, "the gloves are off, pal." The second slipped off, both dropped to the ground. The air felt cool against the skin of his hands, but he didn't notice. "The word 'Terrorist' suggests the theft of something and the introduction of something else. 'Bio-Terrorist', therefor, suggests the theft of biological safety and the introduction of terror in the same medium... Conduits, since their discovery by Humanity, have been labeled bio-terrorists..." He said, slowly walking forward to the fire-wrapped Kuyou. "I am a special kind of Conduit... The best kind. There is no power -" With an electric zap, Silas vanished, and reappeared behind Kuyou in the blink of an eye. _"that cannot be mine!"_ Silas grabbed Kuyou's hands with his own, black tendrils exploded outwards and wrapped around the struggling monster's arms.

Kuyou felt a pain like nothing before, like the essence of his soul was being dragged out of him, while Silas felt like he was sucking a rather thick milkshake through a thin straw.

* * *

_The fire-wielder walked through a field of ash and smoke. All around him there was desolation, not a single living soul could be seen for miles. He called out for his mother and father but they couldn't hear him. Desperately the fire-wielder called, hoping beyond hope that there was some vestige of sentient contact to be had, somewhere out there. He heard something, and the fire-wielder turned to it hopefully, but he was greeted with a devastating sight: Humans, dozens - Hundreds - of them, all in silver suits, carrying odd weapons, all seeming to be impervious to the heat of the Fire Lands. The Fire Wielder screamed as he tried to run, the horror stories of the Human Race rushing to the forefront of his mind as the firearms were pointed to him. He heard the explosive cannon blasts and saw the bullets pepper the ground around him, as he heard the sonic-boom of fighter jets zooming by up above, the only realm the Humans rules unchallenged. _

_He heard the high-pitched whistling of more fire bombs as they dropped again, before his world was enveloped in flames even his skin couldn't protect him from. The fire-demon screamed in pain as the napalm coated his super-human skin and burned it like crispy bacon, but he kept running, the Humans could take his family, his people, but they would not take him. _

_He would escape, only to collapse in a forest in the middle of nowhere, his skin blistering as it tried to heal itself, his lungs burning as he tried to force oxygen in and out, his eyes heavy with fatigue. _

_A voice spoke up, "well... What do we have here?" The fire-wielder dragged his gaze upwards, and was met with a peculiar sight. A figure garbed in thick robes with an odd mask adorning his face, it looked at the fire-wielder with an expression that could only be described as curious interest. The fire-wielder couldn't bring himself to move, speak, or do anything other than force air in and out. "A little firefox... A long way from home..." The masked man looked up, past The fire-wielder. "Hm... Was that your village that the Humans bombed? I'll admit, Australia may have been the best and worst place for your people to settle, but to each his own, and to fate the all." The masked man explained, "here... Allow me to heal you..." He extended his arms and the Fire-Wielder was bathed in a golden-white light, his blisters and burns disappearing in minutes. _

_The Fire-Wielder got to his feet, looking up at the man with suspicion. "Who... Are you?" He asked slowly. _

_The masked man stayed silent for a moment, "I am merely a fairy tale, child... As are we all... Humanity used to fear Fairy Tales... If you follow me, I can show you why." _

_The Fire-Wielder didn't hesitate, he accepted the man's offer. _

* * *

Silas was blasted from Kuyou's back by a bright energy blast, he hit the ground with a grunt, as Kuyou fell to his hands, both of them breathing heavily from the ordeal. However, the Conduit was the one who had experience with these things, and now armed with Kuyo's memories, the Monsterous Conduit wrapped his hands in white hot flames. He was glad beyond words that this worked, but he had no time for words, Kuyou was recovering.

"Where once you were the most powerful... Now your power is mine." Silas said, staring at the Head Enforcer as his chain unfurled. "Now... Step aside." He threatened, heat visibly radiating off of him. This was a fire the fox-demon in front of him couldn't win, with this experience Silas knew the differences between Conduit elements and Monster elements. Conduits absorbed their element and cast it forth from their bodies, essentially turning the element into a fusion of its natural state and the Conduit's own energy, whereas Monsters - like Kuyou - who commanded elements - like Fire - controlled and manipulated the element itself. Silas couldn't absorb Conduit elements, the Hunter had taught him that, but natural elements? He could definitely take that in, and if his hunch was correct, whatever Kuyou threw at him, he could take and throw _right back._

Kuyou slowly rose and turned to Silas, watching the Conduit as its arms were now wrapped in flame. "No... This is where things get interesting." Kuyou called forth a fireball and launched it at Silas, the students that gathered around were quickly backing up as the fire-wielder fought the leech-Conduit.

The Conduit whipped his chain, now superheated to the point where it was glowing white with heat, and slammed the weighted end into the fireball, dispersing it entirely. Silas dashed forward and slammed his chain into Kuyou's face, before ramming his knee into the fire-wielder's gut and leaping back, preparing to whip the fire-wielder again.

_Physically weak, like a Human..._ Kuyou looked up and saw the chain coming for him, _relies upon weapons... Like a Human._ His wrist shot up and the chain wrapped around it. _Has abilities... Like a monster... Relies upon them... Like a Human._ Kuyou yanked on the chain, his monstrous strength breaking the Conduit's balance and sending him flying for the fire-wielder, who reared his fist.

The Conduit realized what was happening and smoke-dashed through the fire-wielder, appearing behind him with his arms covered in electricity. He let go of the chain and threw it to the sky, before he called down a powerful storm of lightning, which slammed into the chain, it acting as a lightning rod and forcing the lightning to course into the fire-wielder. Kuyou had seen the Conduit call lightning down before, and had thought he was ready, but experiencing raw energy coarsing through him was something else. One bolt of lightning was nearly five times hotter than the surface of the sun, and the Conduit was calling a continuous storm down upon the fire-wielder.

The lightning cleared, the chain fell. The conduit caught the chain and ripped it from Kuyou's arm, as the stunned fire-wielder recovered. The Conduit took the moment to recharge, stealing the smoke off of Kuyou's smoldering clothes. He felt the energy course through him as the fire-wielder recovered.

_"My turn!"_ The fire-wielder moved faster than the Conduit was prepared for, and in a second he was on top of the Conduit, unleashing a brutal flurry of superheated punches. The Conduit took several hits before his body turned to smoke, but Kuyou had a plan for this, and leapt back, before he unleashed a guyser of fire.

The Conduit felt the unbearable heat, even in his smoke form it hurt as if it came from the very fires that made up hell. He fled as fast as he could, rematerializing just in time to find a column of fire heading straight for him. Deciding now was the best time to try and see if his theory held weight, Silas held up his hand and made to absorb the flames. Silas felt the flames hit his palm and enter his body, he felt the energy flow but immediately saw the flaw in his plan: He couldn't take in everything Kuyou could dish out, he would burn himself out and overcharge, neither of which were good things. With a grunt, he smoke-dashed away, many of his injuries healed but his body still sore and tired. He reamaterialized swinging, his chain slamming repeatedly into Kuyou, who dodged some attacks, blocked others, and were hit by the rest.

The two remained at a deadlock, the Fire-Wielder holding experience and brutality over the Conduit, who held flexibility and mobility, plus his varied powers, over the fire-wielder. Silas knew, as he blocked and dodged blows from the fire-wielder, that Moka still needed him, her back was burnt almost black, if he didn't help her the damage would be irreparable. Knowing he needed to stun him, Silas decided now was the time to experiment. Smoke was what came from fire, and smoke could choke out a fire, so with this in mind, Silas collected a large orb of smoke in his hand. He sprinted forward and made one circular revolution, electric energy charging into the smoke before he threw the orb of electrified smoke as hard as he could. The resultant vortex of smoke and electricity did almost what the Conduit wanted, it stunned Kuyou, but it didn't stay in place, it kept going.

Silas decided that this was something to focus upon, another day, he rushed to Moka. The Conduit calmed down the fire on his arms and slowly dragged his palms across Moka's back, feeling and seeing her flinch and clench up as he undid the damage dealt by Silas, and when the burns were finally gone, Silas sent the rejuvenating electricity through her body, healing the rest of her wounds. Silas stood up when all of his senses told him to pick up Moka and _run_, he didn't disobey, he picked up Moka and leapt as high and as far as his powers would allow him, landing on a rooftop just as a heatwave passed where they had been standing, turning everything in its path into ash.

_I need a game changer..._ Silas thought, eyes wide as he noticed the raw power the fire-wielder possessed. Kuyou had changed forms, Silas suddenly realized, he was taller now, he looked like a bipedal fox, with four bright white tails of pure, contained fire flowing with heat.

_"You cannot defeat me, Human!"_ Kuyou shouted, searching for Silas in the crowds and on the rooftops. _"You will need FAR MORE POWER than you have right now!" _

Silas sighed. He stood up and laid Moka gently on the ground, before he removed his coat and his sling-bag. He grabbed a sheet of paper from the bag and hurriedly wrote a message, before he stuffed his coat in the bag and pinned the note to the strap, before he leaned down and broke the seal on Moka's rosary. Half hoping she would wake up, she didn't. He nodded and restrained her to the roof, knowing it would wear off in a few hours.

He hoped he would lose steam in that time.

Silas sighed, and with no backwards look, leaped back off of the roof, landing right behind Kuyou, who whipped around. Silas was looking at the ground, his unkempt hair flowing over his face, hiding it from view.

"You want power?" Silas clarified, slowly looking up as energy began collecting around him. "You want a _**monster?!"** _His eyes turned blood red as the swirling energy around him intensified, _"you want my monster form?! **I'LL SHOW YOU A**_** BEAST!"** The Conduit roared, the ground shaking as his voice took on a suddenly demonic tone.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 10

* * *

"Erh... Excuse me, ma'am." Said the quivering voice of the secretary for Brook Augustine. The Director for the Department for Unified Protection had a reputation for being a _very_ angry woman, with a quick trigger finger to boot. The secretary, as she stared apprehensively at her phone, hoped that the woman - who, rumor had it, was actually a bio-terrorist _herself - _hoped that the walls in the building she worked in were thicker than they looked.

_"What is it?"_ The woman's curt voice came through, quickly.

"Er... Lieutenant Daniels is here, he says it is very urgent."

_"I am three minutes from a meeting with the United Nations Security Council, Lieutenant Daniels can -"_

"Ma'am!" This was Daniels now, a disheveled, horrified-looking scrawny man who only looked intimidating because of the uniform he wore and the hand-cannon strapped to his hip. "I need to speak to you _now,_ our satellites have confirmed Ray Field Radiation spikes, consistent with the Empire Event!"

Daniels hadn't so much as said 'Empire Event' before Augustine's sealed door had opened with a stone-like crunch.

* * *

The first thing Silas felt upon regaining sentience was a raw, scratchy feeling all across his body, as if he had taken a wire brush and had scraped it over every single inch of his frame, removing a layer of skin in the process. His eyesight returned after his mind, and what he saw could be readily compared to the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, combined with simple warfare. The ground was covered in chunks of molten magma, the buildings around him were torn apart, with entire sections of the school simply missing. Hearing and Touch returned next, and he realized now that he was breathing heavily, and that he was holding something tightly in his right hand.

Silas looked up, Kuyou was struggling against his iron grip, his battle form thoroughly beaten and even burned. The fire-fox was desperately trying to break the Conduit's grip, but his strength was failing him. The head enforcer was like putty in Silas' hand, his once powerful form now little more than a pencil in the hands of a weight-lifter: Easily breakable, with the most marginal of effort required.

_"What... Are you?"_ Kuyou coughed up, it sounded like he was far away, but Silas knew he was right in front of him.

Before it could even register that he could respond, Silas felt an urge to turn around. He looked behind him and nearly dropped the Enforcer he held aloft; behind him was an enormous creature, perhaps as big as the Beast, it was bathed in bright, golden flames as its body burned far faster than Silas could have ever thought possible. Silas watched as the enormous, fiery red corpse turned to a pile of silver ash; satisfied, the Conduit turned to the Head Enforcer, slowly becoming aware that the ash pile behind him wasn't the only corpse on the battlefield, there were other enforcers, all sharing similar fates: Either being crushed, burned alive, blown apart, or some other fate that Silas sincerely hoped he was wrong about.

Silas did not allow any of his thoughts, misgivings or fears to show, however. So far as he knew, he had just spent an indeterminate amount of time, which had to have been a few hours, minimum, teaching the fire-fox that he was a force to be reckoned with. Showing fear or any kind of weakness right now could undo everything he had done.

Silas slowly brought Kuyou down to eye level, his own dark red orbs fading to dark blue as he stared deep into Kuyou's own.

"I am... A force you should _not_ have provoked." Silas was starting to get a rotting feeling in his gut, something was wrong, _dead wrong_ and he was jumping to several conclusions at once, many of them having to deal with his friends being turned to corpses, their life energy being stolen and given to him, adding to his own not-inconsiderable power. "I am neither Human nor Monster. I am a Conduit of such power that there is not one being on this Earth that can truly face me." Silas lowered his voice, "and you... Who bragged about being an 'S' Class monster... Couldn't _scratch_ me." Now Silas had a choice to make.

He could feel the Beast within him, its once ravenous hunger had been satiated, much of its power was still radiating through his body, like the heat left over from a recently finished fire. It wasn't actively trying to seduce him now, but it was whispering into his ear, telling him of the power he could steal from this being, of the Titanous levels his own power could reach, if only he leeched the very life from Kuyou's soul.

But on the other hand, he knew that the best choice was to let this being live.

Or... Was it?

The saying was, 'with great power comes great responsibility', but if Silas thought about it for even a moment, he realized several things in rapid succession. The first: letting Kuyou Tanzin live would only serve to bring more horror and death later on in life, Kuyou was an evil individual, Silas could see it in his eyes. If Silas let him live, he would have accomplished nothing aside from killing a few dozen Enforcers and ripping apart half of the school. If anything, it was Silas' responsibility to kill this man, to end his terrifying reign. And though he couldn't recognize the thoughts yet, a part of him _never_ wanted to see the horrified, near-death look upon the Vampire's face, ever again.

Silas' eyes squinted shut as he felt the black tendrils that was the manifestation of his only natural-bred power begin slithering their way up his arms, assisted by the enhancements still present from the Beast. Silas knew that what he was doing would be like detonating another one of those bombs that leveled Empire, he would get more power, but it would take lives proportionate to the power he would gain. In this case, he would take all of the power from Tanzin, and would kill him in the process, with a ray field blast.

As the tendrils began pressing at Silas' hardened, charred skin, he heard a voice deep within his mind.

_I'll hunt you down to the ends of the _fuckin' _Earth to take back what's mine!_

Silas blinked, his powers faltering for a moment. Was he like that man? Killing for his own gain? Looking around at the death and destruction around him, Silas came to another moral question: Was he _better_ than that man? The same man who had destroyed the lives of hundreds of people in his misplaced vendetta against the then-Smoke Conduit. Silas had once the moral high ground, but now he had willingly unleashed the vengeful powers of what was practically _god - _or, perhaps Satan? - upon a _high school._ He could tell there were corpses all around him, he hadn't wanted that?

_But what's one more?_ A voice in his head asked, sounding much like the deep voice of the Hunter. _You take 'is power, you'll be the top dog in this place! **No one** will fuck with you again! No one!_

But then another voice began speaking, this one sounded like the southern voice of Dan, Dan the Car Man. _But you'll be continuing a cycle of senseless slaughter, for what? To prove a point to a school you honestly shouldn't even be going to? Why are you even here, doing this, right now? _

Silas looked back into Kuyou's fear-filled eyes, his grip not faltering. _To... Protect - _

_Bullshit, kid! You could have taken this guy with your lightning, you **had** him with the fire! But you had to listen to a **thing** you can't even control! Kid, what is the point of killing him and making the point? Fine, you'll get a few years from the school, away from the DUP... But then what? You go back into the world, armed with a Diploma... And then the DUP is **hounding** your ass again, and you can't even use it!_

Now the Hunter's voice came back. _But you take this mothuh fuckuh's power, even Augustine and her super-powered pansies couldn't take you down! This guy and his friend were tearing you apart, but you tore 'em up right back! You take his power and **no one** can stop you!_

Silas shut his eyes tight.

* * *

Moka Akashiya watched as energy suddenly began collecting and spinning around the thing that was wearing the skin of her friend. She had no idea what to call John VaSilas, and had even fewer words to describe the titanic battle she had just seen. She had been woken up earlier by the earthquakes that had accompanied Silas' transformation, and had been surprised when she found herself in her true form, but had been flabbergasted by the fight she nearly fell in to.

First she had seen an enormous, volcanic monster fighting the Head Enforcer, and almost literally, out of nowhere, the Phoenix had arisen. For hours, the two S-Class monsters, and several dozen other Enforcers too stupid to live, had fought the massive beast, tearing away at his body, only for it to reform and continue to fight. It had only been within the last fifteen minutes that progress had been made for the Enforcers, and while Moka had no idea _how_ they had come to the conclusion, the Phoenix had somehow decided that the shell, the enormous titanic Beast that had been beating them to a bloody pulp for over half an hour, was just that: A _Shell._ With surprising speed, the Phoenix had literally dove through the Titan's chest, and had dragged a miniature version of the monster out with it, it wore the clothes and skin of John VaSilas, but it had power that Moka hadn't felt in her entire life. Even her _father_ couldn't hold a candle to this... Beast.

But then, inexplicably, the Phoenix had failed and had hit the ground, now reduced to a pile of ash, and the former Titan's body had fallen to the ground around them, with Silas himself standing at the epicenter, energy now gathering around him, slowly gaining in lumosity until - it detonated. In a massive explosion, that nearly blinded the Vampire and took her from her feet, Silas _detonated,_ and tore apart the grounds around them with fire and brimstone.

When the dust and debris cleared enough for the Vampire's eyes to see what she needed, she saw many of the buildings nearest the Titan, the fox, and the Phoenix had been leveled, in their place was a massive crater, with Silas and the now deceased Head Enforcer at its center. Moka blinked, before she suddenly realized that Kuyou's yoki hadn't vanished with his death, much the contrary, it had split from his body, had somehow seen fit to _increase_ itself, and now was resting within the Titan!

_How... Did he do that?_ Thought the Vampire, as she saw the Titan drop the body and look around, eyes wide, as if he had only just realized what he had done. A horrified shout was all she had heard before the Titan had disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

Moka nearly made to follow the Titan, when she saw a figure move from the Phoenix's ashes. Interested in seeing the rebirth of a Phoenix - something a very select few, living people could claim to have seen - Moka watched, and her mouth fell open, limply, when she saw who stepped out of the ash, coughing as the small, human-sized bird transformed to its Human form in a flash of white light. The flash revealed a teenage woman of about Moka's age, with fiery orange hair and tan skin.

_Now I've seen it all._ Thought the Vampire, as she leapt towards the ground. _First, John VaSilas turns from an unassuming lightning-flinger into a massive Titan - _she grunted upon impact, but was unharmed. _Then..._ She looked up, brushing her silver hair from her head as she made her way towards the crater. _Chol Nix turns out to be a phoenix. _

Moka Akashiya wanted answers, and she knew that she was more likely to get them from a weakened, recently re-hatched Phoenix than the unknown that John VaSilas was.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 11

* * *

Chol Nix stumbled out of the massive, silvery gray pile of her previous form's ashes, dazed and confused, almost drunkenly. Reviving herself for the first time had been a dizzying experience, and though the Humans would say much to the contrary, it _never_ got easier. This particular time, however, it seemed more arduous than previous times. It was almost as if something had been taken from her in addition to her previous 'life'.

Her fiery red eyes blurred and unfocused, she blinked twice and pressed her hands against her head as she focused, trying to fend off the dizziness. Of everything she had expected when Tanzin had given her this job, being beaten by an Elemental wasn't among it. However, what she had fought _wasn't_ an elemental, whatever it was had simply been a shell for the being inside it, the being that, somehow, hadn't shed its Human form after it had begun fighting, what could _that_ mean?

Worse still was the state she saw Tanzin was in now. He lay at the center of a massive crater, a solitary platform in a massive circular fissure. Chol blinked hard and stared at Tanzin, his still corpse seeming to be in some state that was worse than death. She stumbled forward, intending to figure out the explanation for her notions, but a voice froze her still.

"So... A PSC Enforcer _and_ a Phoenix?" A womanly voiced called out, the voice itself seeming to be familiar, but also foreign at the same time. "This day is simply full of surprises..." Before Chol could turn, the voice was suddenly in her ear and a hand was locked around her throat with an iron grip.

_"Isn't it?"_ Asked Moka Akashiya, sporting blood red eyes and silver hair.

Normally, the Phoenix wouldn't have even thought of fearing the Vampire, their own powers were more or less equal, but she - and, it seemed, the Vampire too - knew that she was recently re-hatched, and 'young' as this new body was, it may not prove to be enough to defeat the Vampire. The two had a staredown for what felt like eternity, before the grinning vampire loosened her hold on the she-Phoenix's throat just enough to allow her to breathe and speak.

"I... Am..." Chol said slowly, trying to find a way to escape her situation, though her mind was still cloudy.

"What?" Asked the vampiress, "let me tell you what you are. You are a liar, a cheat, and worse of all, you took advantage of my outer half's only friend." She finished for the Phoenix, "allow me to tell you what I see, now that I've told you what you are." With no tenderness, Moka shoved Chol to her knees and forced her to look at the area around them, filled with the destruction and corpses caused by the titanic battle. "I see what happens when you push John VaSilas _too far._" She stated, "you and the Public Safety Commission thought Silas to be a Human, and you pushed him too far. Tanzin attacked _me,_ and Silas killed him. You attacked him, and he killed you. Keito attacked him, he killed her." Moka wrenched the Phoenix's face towards hers, "do you understand what I am saying?" She asked calmly.

"Moka... You don't understand." Panted the Phoenix, "that thing... It isn't a -"

"A monster? You are right, there." Said Moka, "you and I both know what Elementals are. They existed on the Earth before even Humans did, they laid the foundations for Earth and its life to exist. They are, for all intents and purposes, _gods,_ Nix. Even Vampires, Werewolves and Phoenixes, the three longest living monster species, cannot possibly hope to match them, not alone, not together." Moka let go of the Phoenix, who fell to the ground and gasped for breath.

"But... You saw... He couldn't control it! What does _that_ say?!" Chol demanded huskily.

"I know what you want it to say, Nix, but think of this: That man is at a school by monsters for monsters... Perhaps he was raised in a Human world where Elementals are by and large _extinct,_ and thus people of his kind are hunted and subjugated by the very people they helped create." The Vampire stared at the Phoenix with open contempt, her blood red eyes boring holes into the back of the tan woman's skull. "Perhaps he was never taught to control his abilities, and came here out of desperation. Perhaps the Humans separated themselves from him, and he came here hoping to be among those who would accept him..." She leaned down next to Chol, "but instead he only gets suspicion where there should be none, trickery where he should have none, and violence where he can't defend against." She stated lowly, "he trusted you, Chol. You and I both were there when he explained why his trust was a very hard thing to come by... So why, by the three Dark Lords... Would you _squander_ that trust for _Kuyou Tanzin?"_ The Vampiress demanded.

Chol was silent for several moments, weighing her options as she gained her breath. "He isn't an elemental, Moka..." She finally said, staring at the Vampire directly in the eye. "There is _no way."_ She had no idea how to put her thoughts to words, she _knew_ that this being wasn't an elemental, but she had no idea how to prove it.

Moka sighed, "every man is entitled to his own secrets, Chol Nix." Said the Vampiress, as she got to her feet, "John VaSilas is no exception... No one person has any right to any man's secrets, least of all people like you, who would try to manipulate your way into their hearts and open them up." She heard what sounded like the shifting of someone's footing, but before the Phoenix could react to what she could sense coming, Moka had already slammed her foot into her face, sending the human-form Phoenix flying as far as the Vampire's strength would allow. "And for that... You need to learn your place."

* * *

John VaSilas crashed into the ground with a loud thud, his smoke-dash working perfectly, and yet also seeming to fail him all the same. He felt as if he were learning to walk again, his powers seemed to be in a state of flux. It felt exactly as it had in Empire, those few times he had picked up the blue-white glowing stones, it felt as if he were thirsty, and he was being given a drink of liquid gold. His powers were responding to this gold, and they were growing because of it, he could feel his powers - fire, lightning, smoke, and even the Beast's - all evolving to new heights.

However, instead of reveling in this feeling, the Conduit instead - with smoke still pouring in around him from his rough landing, creating a fountain effect of smoke pouring onto, over, and around him - hit the ground hard with both palms and vomited. He violently expunged everything he could from his stomach, the guilt and realization of just what he had done were tearing their way through his brain.

He had actually done it, he had _killed_ Kuyou. Sure, the guy wasn't the best one around, but was he really worth _killing?_ Did the benefits of killing him in such a way really outweigh the risks? VaSilas vomited again, what was the difference between him and the Hunter, now? He had just killed to guarantee his own power, _exactly_ as the Hunter had done countless times.

_Exactly_ as the Hunter had done to Dan and his family.

* * *

_Getting used to the darkness of the underground community had taken awhile, but when the Teen had finally done so, it was - oxymoronically - enlightening. The Community that 'Dan the Car Man' had brought him to was, for all intents and purposes, _safe._ They had food, clean water, shelter, and protection. The Teen hadn't seen so many guns in one place, since his last tango with the Reapers. _

_The Teen right now found himself enjoying his first hot meal in weeks, he sat around a small camp fire with Dan, his wife and young daughter, and several dozen other men and women of varying shapes and sizes. Dan's daughter, Sofy, had taken to the Teen instantly, either because he was a new guy, or because he was the closest one alive to her age, he didn't know, but he wouldn't complain, he'd always liked kids. _

_Currently they were gathered around the fire, with the Teen swapping stories with them about his time in the Warren, though they respectfully allowed him to gloss over why he had fled to the Neon. The Teen had been in a rousing explanation of how Dustmen Conduits looked like when, inexplicably, the few electric lights they had shut off. _

_The Teen blinked, a sense of dread entering his stomach, while Dan calmed everyone down. "Don't worry, folks." He said, his accented voice seeming to calm everyone down, "power's probably finally run -" Gunshots, distant and faint, could be heart, along with the sulfurous smell of burning objects and smoke. _

_The Teen's eyes widened to impossible lengths as he saw some of the smoke pour in, staying low to the ground like chemical weapons. He recognized this smoke, the pitch black substance with a deep red glow. _

_"What the hell?" He heard Dan mutter, gun drawn, as he slowly strode over to the smoke as it liesurly billowed out of the stairway to the surface. _

_"No, Dan!" The Teen shouted, but it was too late. The Smoke suddenly came to life, climbing to man-height and then billowing forward, slamming into Dan's chest with a loud impact, and hurling him into the wall with a sickening crunch. Dan's body instinctually clenched tight, and the gun in his hand went off once, the bullet ricocheted off of the ground, unfortunately slamming into the fire, sending smoke and embers flying into the air, panicking the underground residents. _

_The Teen, however, remained frozen amidst the panicking survivors, he saw as the smoke slammed into the mechanic with the force of a freight train, and kept going, not once stopping in its relentless torrent, not until Dan's chest simply gave in and imploded, sending blood and gore outwards on the wall, the mechanic dying mere seconds later. The Teen couldn't tear his eyes from the sight, but he felt a tugging at his pantleg. _

_Frightened, the Teen whipped around, smoke enveloping his own hands, only to see the child staring horrified at him, silently pleading for him to remove her from this situation. The two locked eyes for the briefest of moments, before the Teen steeled himself and bent down to scoop the child up into his arms, and take her away from here, but then a freight train of smoke and ash slammed into him, sending him careening into the wall as a menacing figure cast in a terrifying red glow slowly strode over to the girl next to the fire, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, a killer look in his eye. _

_"I fuckin' told you." The man said, his voice as deep and as dark as his skin. The frightened child desperately tried to flee him, but the Hunter used his smoke as if it were tentacles on an octopus, the tendril-like, shifty appendages whipping forth and wrapping around the child's waist, dragging her forcibly over to him. "I fuckin' told you no one you knew would be safe." _

_"Don't!" The Teen groaned, unable to resist the ceaseless torrent of ever-rushing smoke. _

_"I fuckin' told you I would hunt you... To the ends of the fuckin' earth to get back what's mine!" He grabbed the child by her neck and lifted her into the air, ignoring the Teen's desperate, breathless pleas."Now... I'll show you!" He raised a fistfull of smoke, radiating with the blistering heat, and quick as a flash, slammed his open palm into the face of the child, not breaking eye contact with the Teen for a second as the child thrashed around, the blistering hot smoke rushing straight through her throat and into her lungs. The heat of the smoke alone burned and seared her lung tissue, each breath she struggled and failed to take hurt like she was dying, and for what felt like an eternity she struggled against the man, before finally falling limp, dead as the smoke that filled her lungs, dead as the Teen, pinned to the wall, felt to the world.  
_

* * *

John VaSilas shook himself violently from the memory, dry-heaving as he tried to bring everything back under control.

"Sounds like you're having fun." Said a familiar, womanly voice, as Silas felt the smoke finally stop pouring off of his back. He never understood why, for all of his powers, smoke felt like the most instinctual one to him, but he never questioned it.

"Enjoy the fight?" Silas asked, making an effort not to slump to the ground in a pile of his vomit, successfully being able to flop onto his back just a few inches away.

"It was interesting." She said, "you told me you'd have answers."

"I want my gloves back." Silas said, his voice blank and emotionless, "then we'll talk." He said, staring deep into the sky.


End file.
